and organized conferences around the country to aid BEOs. Joint Center data and research began to garner attention from legislative and judicial arenas. In anticipation of the 1976 general elections, the Joint Center formed the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation (now an independent coalition of 80 organizations), which increased voter registration and turnout during a campaign season that put Carter the White House by a slim margin. In October of the same year, the Joint Center became completely independent from Howard University and the Metropolitan Applied Research Center, which had had joint oversight since the Joint Center's birth. As the number of BEOs grew, the center's role changed. The Joint Center helped form the National Conference of Black Mayors and the National Caucus of Black State Legislators, which began to take on much of the political assistance to black politicians the center had been doing. (The Joint Center also formed the Committee of Policy for Racial Justice around this time.) By the 1980s the Joint Center's new leadership, including Margaret Simms, who served as president from 1986 to 2007, realigned the Joint Center’ mission to serve as a full-fledged black think tank for scholarly research on social and economic issues; they believed that the civil rights movement had outgrown reliance on the charismatic leadership of a few individuals,. Through that decade and into the next, the Joint Center published extensive research on bars to minority voting and the effects of redistricting on black political power, and increased ties with non-black minority groups. By the 1990s the Joint Center's research into a range of economic issues – expanding income gaps, the increased role of blacks in the U.S. economy, the condition of young black males and children, the accuracy of the U.S. Census, and the North American Free Trade Agreement – prompted the change to the group's current name. But the group has continued to engage in some political assistance activities, such as providing training to South Africa’s new post-Apartheid political parties. 2000 and after In 2002, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation gave the Joint Center a $7 million grant to establish the Health Policy Institute, which, Joint Center representatives said, will improve the health of black Americans and other minorities and "expand their effective participation in the political and public policy arenas around health issues." "identify and promote effective solutions to the problem of health disparities." "inform members of Congress