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.

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.