Explore UAB

New York, NY, June 1, 2022 — The Vilcek Foundation and The Arnold P. Gold Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2022 Vilcek-Gold Award for Humanism in Healthcare will be presented to Dr. Mona Fouad, MD, MPH.

For Angela Williams, it’s personal.

In a span of two weeks in July 1991, Williams lost both her parents to cancer. Ten years later, cancer took her sister.

Not the kind to sit idle, she reached out to programs overseen by the University of Alabama at Birmingham Minority Health & Health Equity Research Center (MHERC) and the UAB O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center called REACH 2010 and the Deep South Network for Cancer Control. Its mission was, to engage with communities in addressing the disproportionate number of Black people who die from cancer.

New research from the Reducing Ethical and Social Prejudicial Effects of COVID-19 Testing in Underserved Populations (RESPECT-UP) study—led by MHERC Member, Gabriela Oates, Ph.D.—adapted existing scales to create a new measure for COVID-19 stigma attitudes and perceptions. RESPECT-UP includes a multidisciplinary team of UAB investigators focused on reducing stigma, discrimination, and adverse social factors affecting COVID-19 testing.

Health disparities continue to pose significant challenges to achieving health equity, undermining the well-being of individuals and communities. To ensure the validity and fairness of research outcomes, it is essential to include representation across areas such as race and ethnicity, age, gender, and socioeconomic conditions. When research neglects the experiences and health needs of under-represented groups, it risks missing insights that could drive progress toward health equity.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been a big focus on health disparities and the consequences they have on minorities. At UAB, we have world-renowned researchers that focus on determining why these disparities exist and ways to reduce the gap.

In the spirit of National Minority Health Month (April), we set out to help raise awareness for the different programs that operate out of the UAB Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center. First, we spotlighted EMOT-ECON—which pays attention to the financial burden of a disease and its effect on a person’s emotional well-being.

To help you learn more about the woman leading this program, we are interviewing Maria Pisu, Ph.D. and professor in the Division of Preventive Medicine.

UAB Minority Health & Health Equity Research Center (MHERC), a leader in health disparities research, is excited to announce the appointment of Irfan Asif, M.D., chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine and associate dean of primary care and rural health, as the Center’s Co-Director.