Part of the team that will lead the Arkansas Center for Health Disparities. (from left-right: Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., Nick Zaller, Ph.D., Dean Jim Raczynski, Ph.D., Keneshia Bryant-Moore, Ph.D., Martha Phillips, Ph.D., and Carol Cornell, Ph.D.
Oct. 19, 2017 | LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Center for Health Disparities at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has been awarded a $7 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for research on minority health disparities, including reducing tobacco smoke exposure among children in the Delta and studying HIV prevention among incarcerated African-Americans.
The grant was awarded by the NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
The center, housed in the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, is one of 12 specialized research centers funded in the country to conduct multidisciplinary research, research training, and community engagement activities to improve minority health and reduce health disparities. The grant will support pilot studies to help junior faculty compete for larger grants and train the next generations of researchers.
The center will use funding to implement two new research projects. Both will use community health workers to help reduce chronic disease risk factors.
One project will concentrate on the Arkansas Delta to reduce tobacco smoke exposure among children and their caregivers and help African-American women quit smoking.
This is being led by Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco in the College of Public Health; Katherine Donald, executive director of the non-profit Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas; and Naomi Cottoms, executive director of the Tri-County Rural Health Network in Helena-West Helena.
The other project — led by Nick Zaller, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Public Health and director of the Office of Global Health at UAMS; Alex Marshall, assistant professor in the College of Public Health; and Melissa Zielinski, NIH postdoctoral fellow with the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute — will look at HIV prevention and risk among incarcerated African-Americans.
Community Engagement and Dissemination Core—to expand and facilitate equitable, sustainable, collaborative relationships with community and other stakeholders and to coordinate dissemination of research findings to diverse audiences.
The center will continue its mission of developing research to improve access to quality prevention and health care programs for racial and ethnic minorities with a goal of reducing health disparities.
“Arkansas has some of the greatest racial and ethnic health disparities in the country, but research can provide many of the answers for the best way to lower the disproportional burden of disease borne by our minority communities,” said Raczynski.
The center thrives on its success of developing multidisciplinary, multilevel research and maintaining strong, collaborative work over the years with partners that help carry out its mission. These include: the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, the UAMS Office of Community-Based Public Health, the UAMS Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Taskforce, the Arkansas Department of Health, the Arkansas Minority Health Commission, Arkansas Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the El Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica/Escuela de Salud Publica de Mexico, the Engaged Institutions Initiative, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Health Promotion, the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas, and the Tri-County Rural Health Network.