The Center for the Study of Health Disparities (CSHD), a National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) Project Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach and Research on Disparities in Health and Training (EXPORT) Center, provides innovative opportunities for scholarship. The CSHD emphasizes a trans-disciplinary, social ecology approach, in accordance with recommendations from the 2002 Institute of Medicine report, to ameliorate health disparities. Students, faculty, and practitioners from many health disciplines are equipped with career development and training activities along a five-pronged approach as briefly described below: • Course Offerings: a health disparities distance education course, • Research Presentations: graduate student discussion of published health disparities research, • Seminars: researcher/faculty presentations of health promotion/disease prevention strategies to address health disparities, • Recruitment and Mentoring: student recruitment and faculty mentoring to increase investigators dedicated to health disparities research, • Training: junior and senior faculty training to increase health disparities competencies.
This presentation will include details and examples of each approach and its impact on faculty, students, and the community at large. The CSHD has made significant strides in equipping health professionals to address health disparities, through culturally competent, community-based participatory research, education and training. Partnering with Texas A&M University Health Science Center, School of Rural Public Health and College of Medicine, Prairie View A&M University, and other EXPORT center affiliates, the CSHD provides professional development, via innovative technology that is essential for the 21st century scholar, aspiring to improve health disparities and champion public health ethics in a global society.