In addition, the funding will be used to create minority cancer education programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

“These funds are helping us make a paradigm shift in the way community-based and academic research is planned and performed in the arena of health disparities,” said Mona Fouad, M.D., director of the UAB Minority Health and Research Center (MHRC). “We hope to continue feeding a culture of collaboration that cuts across all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic barriers to benefit everyone’s health.”

The $13 million is made up of grants from three separate funding sources, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fouad and Edward Partridge, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, are the principal investigators on the projects. Descriptions of the three grants are as follows:

NCI has renewed the funding for UAB, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and Tuskegee University to continue as partners in cancer education, community outreach and research projects. Each institute was awarded $5 million as part of the NCI’s Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnership Program. Examples of projects planned through the partnership include:

• Cancer Education & Career Development: The overall goal is to develop programs to introduce both faculty, graduate and undergraduate students to training and development in the area of cancer research as it relates to minorities, and to encourage more minority students to enter the cancer research field. This program also will extend the training of graduate students through the development and implementation of a Cancer Research Fellows Program.
  
  
• Community Outreach: The aim is to recruit and retain African-American participation in cancer clinical trials through clinical trial awareness programs targeted at African-American communities in the area. This outreach program will give African-Americans diagnosed with cancer an opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art cancer therapies and ultimately contribute to the elimination of health disparities.
  
  
• Research Program: This part of the partnership funds five specific research projects to investigate reasons for health disparities at the basic, clinical and population level. Each project is co-led by an investigator at the UAB Cancer Center and an investigator at either Morehouse or Tuskegee.

The CDC awarded this grant to UAB as an extension of the REACH 2010 grant the school received in 1999. The goal of REACH 2010 was to increase breast and cervical cancer screening rates among black women. After more than seven years of successfully changing individual behaviors in Alabama’s Black Belt region, Jefferson County and Montgomery, resulting in a decreased screening disparity between African-American and white women, the CDC named UAB one of 18 Center of Excellence to Eliminate Disparities (CEED) in the nation, and awarded the school the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health across the United States (REACH US) funding.

With the REACH US funding, UAB is to become a national clearing house to disseminate evidence-based strategies and models, and provide technical assistance and support to other communities throughout the United States. Since UAB is the only CEED in Alabama, and there are few others in the South, it will focus its efforts on Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas.

The National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the NIH, awarded the school a five-year, $4.5 million grant to fund continued development of the UAB MHRC as a comprehensive health disparities research center. Specific projects include:

• Research into the interactions between biological, clinical and social factors associated with health disparities in cancer screenings, diabetes and obesity
  
  
• Creation of a Summer Enrichment Program that will offer researchers and health care professionals training to help them better understand and work with minority populations, and also provide minority students with an introduction to the health profession.
  
  
• Continue outreach through the MHRC Building Healthy Communities program to empower individuals to take charge of their health.