Community Outreach at UAB
Big picture
“Each year, UAB researchers generate thousands of studies that can point the way to new treatments for a host of diseases,” says President Watts. “But those data do no good if they stay in the lab and never make it out into doctor’s offices and patients’ homes.”
“How to stop cancer?”
Research associates Jianqing Zhang (foreground) and Jacques Riby (background), members of epidemiologist Christine Skibola’s team investigating risk factors for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, get ready for their close-ups.UAB’s Comprehensive Cancer Center has set the model for a growing number of comprehensive centers at UAB—tackling diabetes, heart disease, neuroscience, transplantation, and more—whose mission is to take research from the lab bench to patient bedsides and beyond.
The Cancer Center and UAB’s Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Center (MHRC) conduct life-saving patient education efforts in Alabama’s Black Belt. Their work has dramatically improved mammography rates, provided counseling for rural cancer survivors, and connected church congregations with trained health educators, for instance. The MHRC has reached out to Birmingham residents with free screenings and health information at HealthSmart, run out of a storefront downtown.
Outreach efforts are thriving across campus. The nationally recognized science education programs offered by the UAB Center for Community OutReach Development (CORD) have helped more than 50,000 students get excited about science and math careers. ArtReach, an educational arm of UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, is bringing classes in art, dance, music, and more to YWCAs, senior centers, and more venues in Birmingham’s Woodlawn neighborhood and other areas.
Close-up
Discover UAB’s growing links with the neighboring Woodlawn and Avondale neighborhoods in “Good Neighbors”:
"...When Theresa Bruno, board president of UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, toured the YWCA facility in Woodlawn last year, she felt that adding an environment steeped in the arts would give residents nourishment for both soul and spirit.
'The arts have transformative and healing power,' says Bruno. 'They’re an outlet for expression. If there is something you don't want to talk about, you can drum it out...'”Read more
Learn how UAB professors give back at a local maximum-security prison in “Life Sentences”:
"'...They go right to the heart of really big questions about life and death, and all of the lousy things people do to one another,' Chapman says.
Seeing the works through the inmates’ eyes has made 'me quicker to reach for the deeper questions in the classroom,' she says...” Read more
Next > Do you want to know how to change the world? UAB graduates in action
