Below is the link for publication of our Barbershop Talk With Brothers pilot test of our project for which Dr. Tracey Wilson, BHDC Research Core Co-Director, Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences School of Public Health is the PI.


BARBERSHOP  TALK WITH BROTHERS: USING COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH TO DEVELOP AND  PILOT TEST A PROGRAM TO REDUCE HIV RISK AMONG BLACK HETEROSEXUAL MEN. 

BHDC New Publications

News

Brooklyn Health Disparities Center Mentor Internship 2016

Dr. Marilyn Fraser

Dr. Salifu Awarded an Award of Excellence

Health Science Academy

Dr. Moro Salifu, Director of The Brooklyn Health Disparities Center, has pledged with the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable and The American Cancer Society to share a commitment to eliminating disparities in access to care. As such, our organizations will work to empower communities, patients, providers, community health centers and health systems to embrace these models and develop the partnerships needed to deliver coordinated, quality
colorectal cancer screening and follow up care that engages the patient and empowers them to complete needed care from screening through treatment and long-term follow-up. In this initiative 
dozens of organizations have committed to eliminating colorectal cancer as a major public health
problem and are working toward the shared goal of reaching 80% of adults aged 50 and older screenedfor colorectal cancer by 2018. By achieving this goal, together we can prevent 200,000 colon cancer deaths in less than 2 decades. 

Watch Now! Up Close and personal with Dr. Salifu

Dr. Marilyn Fraser, Co-Director of The Brooklyn Health Disparities Center, CEO of The Arthur Ashe Institute was featured on  WABC  "Here & Now" which  aired on  Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016 at 12:00 noon on WABC.

Here & Now with Dr. Marilyn Fraser 2016

This year the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center had a five week summer Internship. Students had a chance to meet various professionals within the healthcare setting. Topics that were discussed included: Introduction to Health Disparities, introduction to Data Entry, Qualitative & Quantitative research design, Informational Interviewing, among many others.

Below is the link for publication of Dr. Daniel Cukor, BHDC Research Core Research Scientists, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

Psychosocial Intervention Improves Depression, Quality of Life, and Fluid Adherence in Hemodialysis.

Health Disparities Research Awards

Please join the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center in congratulating Zerin Kashem.  Ms. Kasehm is a  former trainee of the BHDC's Underrepresented Minority Research Traineeship.  Her publication was entitled, "Preconception Peer Educators: Spreading the Word". Her essay was published in Penn State's Undergraduate Journal of Service-Learning and Community-Based Research,. Ms. Kashem essay depicts her service-learning experiences with a Community Advisory Board Member of ours:  Brooklyn Perinatal Network (BPN). The Center would like to our partners at BPN--Denise, Ngozi and Brandy, for giving Ms. Kashem the opportunity to work with their organization to teach high school students the importance of preconceived health.

Dr. Cukor and Dr. Salifu, along with other investigators at Downstate and 2 other New York hospitals are currently analyzing the data from a study they did on kidney transplant medication adherence. 

Strict adherence to anti-rejection medication is a key factor in maintaining the health of a donated kidney, yet many people have difficulties taking their medication exactly as prescribed. The current study interviewed over 300 ethnically diverse transplant patients, from across New York City, about their medication adherence and what types of problems prevent them from taking their medication.
While, by and large, most patients reported taking their medication as prescribed, there were some interesting differences across the sample. Patients who reported more concerns about the safety of the medication and less conviction about the need to take the medication, not surprisingly, took their medication less frequently. What was also true was these folks identified more
barriers to getting their meds, being more forgetful and feeling more depressed, anxious and generally worse than people who believed the medications were safe and necessary. While we are still analyzing the data, the need to study people's perspectives and belief systems seems to be fundamental to understanding why they do anything, or in particular take their immunosuppressant medication.

Ongoing Research

Please click the photo above to watch BHDC's Dr. Salifu and others discuss Black Health and other statistics during these trying times

SUNY Downstate Medical Center & BHDC Awarded $10 Million Endowment Grant 

[October 9, 2017]

SUNY Downstate Awarded $10 Million from National Institutes of Health

Funding Will Go to Health Disparities Program to Research Minority Health Disparities & Train More Minority Researchers and Scientists;

First Major Award for Downstate under Tenures of SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson and President Wayne Riley

 

Brooklyn, NY – SUNY Downstate Medical Center has been awarded a $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to form a translational health disparities research program, with a focus on recruiting and training underrepresented minority scientists.

Funding will provide resources for junior faculty endowments, research fellowships, and recruitment of underrepresented minority students from area partner colleges to study translational health disparities and population health research. This is the first major endowment awarded to the Downstate campus under the tenures of both SUNY Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson and SUNY Downstate President Dr. Wayne J. Riley.

“Minority communities that are vulnerable to health disparities are often the same groups that are underrepresented in biomedical research,” SUNY Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson said. “It is SUNY’s responsibility as a public institution of higher learning to identify solutions to this imbalance and create opportunities for more minority researchers to pursue their passion in the medical professions in the state of New York. It is only fitting that SUNY lead the way, and I thank President Riley and the team at SUNY Downstate for attracting the funding needed to support this innovative program.”

The TRANSPORT Program funded by the award will be led by principal investigators Carlos N. Pato, MD, dean of the College of Medicine at Downstate; President Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP; and Moro O. Salifu, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, chair of medicine and a director of BHDC.

“We must train and employ more minority researchers to study the problem of minority health disparities,” SUNY Downstate President Riley said. “The TRANSPORT program at Downstate is an important step in advancing social justice and addressing racial and ethnic disparities through our public institutions. This program is just another proud achievement for the SUNY System. I am confident that through this effort, we will begin to create new generations of researchers to study obstacles to access, education, and equity that disproportionately impact minorities and are pervasive in health care.”

SUNY Downstate’s TRANSPORT program was awarded the $10 million endowment over six years by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health. The endowment will enable the TRANSPORT program to support as many as three new faculty and six research fellows per year, and, as the program reaches full capacity, recruit 25 new underrepresented minority students per year from area colleges.

TRANSPORT — or TRANSlational Program Of health disparities Research Training – builds on previous work done at SUNY Downstate focused on increasing diversity and allocating resources to study the causes of racial disparities in healthcare. The TRANSPORT program is partly a continuation of successful programs such as the annual PRIDE Summer Institute (PRogram to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research) and the ongoing work of the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center (BHDC). The program will emphasize the development of translational, real-world solutions to address these challenges.

The Summer Institute PRogram to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research (PRIDE) is an all-expense-paid research career advancement opportunity sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. BHDC is a partnership between SUNY Downstate, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, and the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate comprises a College of Medicine, a College of Nursing, a College of Health Related Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, a School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative including the Downstate Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT for early-stage and more mature companies, respectively. It is the only academic medical center in Brooklyn, serving a community of more than 2.5 million people.

SUNY Downstate ranks twelfth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school. For more information, visit www.downstate.edu.Type your paragraph here.

Dr. Salifu Receives Prestigious MACP

80% by 2018

In February's Research in Progress Meeting at the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center Jeremy Herring, a MPH candidate at SUNY-Downstate, facilitated a discussion highlighting his research in the steadily increasing rates of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses in New York City.  According to the Bureau of Correctional Health Services in New York City 38% of the 11,408 inmates, suffer from a mental illness almost a 10% increase from 2010.  Additionally 7% of the jail population suffers from a serious mental illness such as depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.  His research and critical review discuss the history of this incarceration trend among the mentally ill, the public safety imperative of an effectual mental health system, and also analyzes prevention methods while focusing his symposium on Mayor De Blasio’s 2014 action plan recommendations for New York City.   

Please join us  in congratulating Dr. Daniel Cukor, Research Scientist of the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center and  Marilyn Fraser-White, Director of BHDC's Community Engagement Core and Deputy Executive Director at Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health for partaking in SUNY Downstate's Health Disparities Research Funding Initiative for  receiving the President's Health Disparities Award.  A total of 42 applications were submitted. Best wishes  for success to BHDC's two awardees.

Articles on Health Disparities in Kidney Transplantation

• Epstein,Arnold M., et al. "Racial disparities in access to renal transplantation—clinically appropriate or due to underuse or overuse?." New England Journal of Medicine 343.21 (2000): 1537-1544. 

• Young, Carlton J., and Robert S. Gaston. "Renal transplantation in black Americans." New England Journal of Medicine 343.21 (2000): 1545-1552. 

• Powe, Neil R. "To have and have not: Health and health care disparities in chronic kidney disease." Kidney international 64.2 (2003): 763-772 

VIDEO: "Black Health Trust"

Click the link below to watch the channel 1 News Feature about the Arthur Ashe Institute's Health Science Academy. Every year,  students from the Brooklyn Health Disparities Summer Internship get a chance to learn firsthand about the medical field  and various medical career paths.