The theme for this year's conference, "Translational Research: The Road from Efficacy to Equity," highlights the importance of translating scientific discoveries into effective strategies and policies to eliminate health disparities, says conference co-director Kea Turner, a master's student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education.

 

"This year's conference will bring together researchers and practitioners from a variety of disciplines such as education, journalism, law, art and religious studies to offer diverse experiences and perspectives on making research findings more applicable and accessible to minority communities," she said.

 

Turquoise E. Griffith, also a master's student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, is the other conference co-director.

 

"The MSC is honored to continue the tradition of hosting the Minority Health Conference - which is considered the oldest and largest student-led health conference in the nation," Griffith said. "Each year, the Minority Health Conference brings together faculty, community leaders, students and public health professionals from a variety of disciplines, all with a single goal in mind - to eliminate health disparities."

 

The conference's 14th annual William T. Small Jr. Keynote Lecture will be delivered by Ana V. Diez-Roux, MD, PhD, MPH, professor of epidemiology and director of University of Michigan's Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities and Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. Diez-Roux will speak at 9:30 a.m.

A second keynote will be presented at 1:15 p.m. by Nina Wallerstein, DrPH, MPH, professor in The University of New Mexico's Department of Family and Community Medicine and director of UNM's Center for Participatory Research.

The morning lecture will be broadcast on the Internet from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed by a live Q-and-A session. A number of other universities simultaneously holding minority health events will broadcast the William Small Jr. Lecture on their campuses, These partners include The University of California at Los Angeles, George Washington University and The University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

Morning and afternoon lectures will be followed by a series of poster exhibitions, small-group sessions and panel discussions. Among the topics to be addressed are:

• Disparities in healthy food access (led by Alice Ammerman, DrPH, UNC professor of nutrition and director of the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention);
• Medicaid, civil rights and federal court access (led by Jane Perkins, legal director of the National Health Program);
• Aging and religion (led by Linda George, PhD, professor of sociology and psychology and Health and Social Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University);
• Art-based therapy for immigrant and refugee health (led by Ilene Sperling, MA, LPC-S, ATR, clinical director of the North Carolina Art Therapy Institute in Durham, N.C.); and
• Impact of institutional discrimination upon mental health of lesbian, gay and bisexual populations (led by Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, PhD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health).
  

First initiated by the UNC Minority Student Caucus in 1977, the conference was developed to highlight health issues of concern to people of color and to attract students interested in minority concerns to public health.

 

The event regularly attracts about 500 students, faculty members, researchers, public health and human services professionals, and community leaders from North Carolina and surrounding states, with many throughout the country viewing the keynote lecture by webcast or on DVD. Early registration is encouraged.

For more information about the conference, visit http://studentorgs.unc.edu/msc. Registration also is available online.

 
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.