Center for Minority Health
Encyclopedia
The Center for Minority Health (CMH), part of The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
, was established in 1994 through a grant from the Richard King Mellon
Foundation. It provides the framework that is necessary to address the health issues of underserved, ethnic and racial minorities, and works to improve the health and wellbeing of those populations by eliminating health disparities
as defined in Healthy People 2010
. CMH transforms research into creative outreach practices and community interventions that positively impacts the health of their community. Further, the Center for Minority Health works with the University of Pittsburgh
Schools of Health Sciences to enhance the cultural competence of academic scholars and students. The CMH strives toward a vision of a fair and equal society that both values and contributes to the health of all people, and it works toward that goal on a local, regional, and national level. Dr. Stephen B. Thomas is the Director of the Center for Minority Health, as well as being the Principal Investigator of EXPORT Health, and the Phillip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Public Justice.
.
HBFP provides health coaches, lay health advocates, and nutritionists at no cost to help families alter their activity and diet to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle. They offer cooking classes, exercise classes, walking clubs, a smoking cessation
program, as well as yoga
, t'ai chi, and meditation
classes, all designed to promote a healthy lifestyle and prevent disease.
In addition, HBFP provides genetic counseling to ascertain family health history and any risks that might be associated with it, as well as giving a health risk assessment
to create a personal health analysis, and they help individuals learn practical ways to handle chronic disease.
Healthy Black Families Project also implements the “Small Steps, Big Rewards” campaign, inspired by the findings of a NIH sponsored study, HHS
’ Diabetes Prevention Program (DDP) clinical trial. This study has shown that individuals with pre-diabetes (those whose blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet diabetic), can delay and possibly even prevent type 2 diabetes simply by making moderate changes in diet and exercise that enable them to lose five to seven percent of their body weight
. Regular physical activity such as a brisk thirty minute walk five times per week, and modest weight loss
could cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by more than half in pre-diabetic individuals. These lifestyle changes were shown to be especially successful in individuals over age 65. HBFP has every confidence that these methods will prove effective in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods.
The Healthy Black Family Project provides the framework for all of these programs, and tracks the progress of the families and individuals who are involved. Approximately 6000 individuals have enrolled in the program.
"The overall goal of the Healthy Black Family Project,” said Dr. Angela Ford, associate director of the center, “is to close the gap in health status between blacks and whites through coordinated community mobilization that is culturally relevant and grounded in a public health approach."
Take a Health Professional to the People Day is just the sort of innovative solution needed to address this serious disparity problem. Part of the Health Advocates In Reach (HAIR) program, it sends doctors, nurse, pharmacists and health educators into the barber shops and beauty salons of underserved communities to deliver health screenings and health education
in a familiar, comfortable environment. Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, the director of CMH explains, "Far too many African Americans have no ‘medical home
’ to access health care
services, so government programs that promote ‘taking a loved one to the doctor’ are not as effective for this community. Therefore, CMH created Take a Health Professional to the People Day. By focusing our efforts on a single day, we believe we can help generate a greater understanding of the importance of regular health screenings while at the same time reaching people who tend to have the least access to healthcare."
The Center for Minority Health inaugurated “Take a Health Professional to the People Day in 2002, starting with just three barber shops and salons. The program now includes nine beauty salons and barber shops, and over one hundred health professionals, some of whom continue to work with the shops in an on-going effort to provide health and wellness activities there.
In 2007, CMH linked forces with the Mayo Clinic
Urban Immersion Program for ‘Take a Health Professional to the People Day’. Eight Mayo staff members traveled to Pittsburgh to gain valuable experience in delivering health care in a non-traditional setting. Dr. Sherine Gabriel, director of Education Resources for the Mayo Clinic Center for Translational Science Activities (CTSA), states, “We created the Urban Immersion Program in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Thomas and the CMH to help our students, faculty, researchers and physicians learn and apply these innovative community outreach strategies here at Mayo Clinic.”
activities that will be implemented during National Minority Health Month (NMHM), which occurs every April. Each group in this diverse collection, brought together from the academic community, health providers, health promotion and human service organizations, and community representatives, organizes health promotion events that focus on the seven health disparity priorities of CMH.
These NMHM community-based events and activities are deeply rooted in the history of the Black community. They are modeled on the Health Improvement Week, which under the leadership of Booker T. Washington
evolved into the National Negro Health Movement, and was annually observed for 35 years. Local NMHM activities are planned to be of value and interest for the entire family – including health
, mental health
, and wellness screenings, as well as physical activity and entertainment that features the world famous Double Dutch Divas.
In addition to their responsibilities of planning for NMHM, the Working Groups are also valuable as an ideal forum where materials and ideas related to research studies and the EXPORT Health communication campaign can be field tested. Representing, as they do, a wide-base of constituents and organizations, they also provide a large network for disseminating valuable information to the community.
and to promote health
among students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools
. Initiated in the 2003-2004 academic year, targeting those students who entered sixth grade that year, the program has a twofold goal: 1) to enable staff to systematically engage every student who entered sixth grade in 2003 in “active living”; and 2) to increase students’ knowledge, attitudes and healthy choices regarding physical activity, nutrition
, and a tobacco-free lifestyle. The program, which partners with the Pittsburgh Public School System and the Allegheny County Health Department, follows the student’s progress toward achieving these goals, tracking them over a seven-year period through the year 2010, when they graduate. The Center for Minority Health is working toward making the Class of 2010 the healthiest students ever to graduate from the Pittsburgh Public School System, to coincide with the deadline set for Healthy People 2010, the nation’s health promotion
program.
This unique collaboration between the Center for Minority Health (CMH), Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools, focuses on partnership building between school administrators, teachers, students and their families, and the public health community. This creates a unique opportunity to address community needs of eliminating health disparities by customizing relevant interventions to address student health issues.
The Colorado Trust, a non-profit foundation with interests in minority health, supported a second meeting on this topic in June 2007. Here, the CMH and other stakeholders further discussed initial strategies to advance the development and formation of the Academy for Health Equity – the organization that can bring together all the diverse stakeholders to exchange ideas, disseminate information, and engage in research
and training in a coordinated effort to promote health equity for all populations.
Presently, the HHS Office of Minority Health is providing the technical assistance necessary for the Academy as it develops the infrastructure and means necessary to effectively address health disparities through concepts of health equity. The Academy for Health Equity held its inaugural meeting in Denver, Colorado
on June 26-June 27, 2008.
/African Americans, Native Americans
, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. The Minority Health Archive is a free service, providing research opportunities and an online reservoir for collecting any important information relevant to the health of minorities.
The goal of the Minority Health Archive has been to serve as the primary repository for all material within the field of minority health – including journal articles, government reports, books, conference proceedings, Web-based materials, theses/dissertations, or any other material that can make a significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge in this field of study. To this end, any user of the archive can submit material to the Archive after completing a simple registration process (though only material relevant to minority health with be accepted and posted to the live archive by the editorial staff).
In 2010, editorship for the Minority Health Archive moved to the University of Maryland
's Center for Health Equity, although the system is still hosted and maintained by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
. Concurrent with this change, the scope of the archive was reconceived to include broader issues of health equity and health disparity and was renamed as the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive.
. This 2,100 mile bicycle route, from Mobile, Alabama
to Owen Sound, Ontario
, follows one of the historic Underground Railroad
trails that escaped slaves would take to freedom. The goals of this project are threefold; to encourage greater diversity in recreational bicycling, to improve the health of Black Americans through biking, and to encourage interest in African American cultural history.
(NIH), National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD)through Project EXPORT (Excellence in Partnership through Community Outreach and Research on Disparities in Health and Training). EXPORT Health enables academic scholars to collaborate with public, private and community organizations to focus on minority health disparity and work toward eliminating these disparities. Working through the Center for Minority Health, EXPORT Health helps the University of Pittsburgh strengthen the research and training infrastructure for the study of minority health disparities, and the goal of eliminating those disparities.
The new center will also partner with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh’s psychiatry
department to explore the link between chronic disease and depression
, and to evaluate problem-solving therapy
as a means for preventing depression. To facilitate early intervention and prevention, the psychiatry faculty will also train Healthy Black Family Project staff to qualify them to proactively identify those program participants who may be at risk for depression.
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
The Graduate School of Public Health is one of 17 schools comprising the University of Pittsburgh. The school, founded in 1948, was first led by Thomas Parran, surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service. It is ranked as the 11th best such school in the United States by US News and World...
, was established in 1994 through a grant from the Richard King Mellon
Richard King Mellon
Richard King Mellon , commonly known as R.K., was an American financier from Ligonier, Pennsylvania.-Biography:The son of Richard B. Mellon, nephew of Andrew W...
Foundation. It provides the framework that is necessary to address the health issues of underserved, ethnic and racial minorities, and works to improve the health and wellbeing of those populations by eliminating health disparities
Health disparities
Health equity refers to the study of differences in the quality of health and health care across different populations....
as defined in Healthy People 2010
Healthy People 2010
Healthy People 2010 , started in January 2000 by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, is a nationwide health promotion and disease prevention plan to be achieved by the year 2010...
. CMH transforms research into creative outreach practices and community interventions that positively impacts the health of their community. Further, the Center for Minority Health works with the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
Schools of Health Sciences to enhance the cultural competence of academic scholars and students. The CMH strives toward a vision of a fair and equal society that both values and contributes to the health of all people, and it works toward that goal on a local, regional, and national level. Dr. Stephen B. Thomas is the Director of the Center for Minority Health, as well as being the Principal Investigator of EXPORT Health, and the Phillip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Public Justice.
Healthy Black Family Project
The Healthy Black Family Project (HBFP) concentrates on several East End neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. This area, called the Health Empowerment Zone, has a high percentage of Black residents and of residents living below the federal poverty line. HBFP works with individuals and families, providing a variety of activities and services to help prevent diabetes and hypertensionHypertension
Hypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...
.
HBFP provides health coaches, lay health advocates, and nutritionists at no cost to help families alter their activity and diet to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle. They offer cooking classes, exercise classes, walking clubs, a smoking cessation
Smoking cessation
Smoking cessation is the process of discontinuing the practice of inhaling a smoked substance. This article focuses exclusively on cessation of tobacco smoking; however, the methods described may apply to cessation of smoking other substances that can be difficult to stop using due to the...
program, as well as yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
, t'ai chi, and meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
classes, all designed to promote a healthy lifestyle and prevent disease.
In addition, HBFP provides genetic counseling to ascertain family health history and any risks that might be associated with it, as well as giving a health risk assessment
Health risk assessment
A health risk assessment is one of the most widely used screening tools in the field of health promotion and is often the first step in multi-component health promotion programs....
to create a personal health analysis, and they help individuals learn practical ways to handle chronic disease.
Healthy Black Families Project also implements the “Small Steps, Big Rewards” campaign, inspired by the findings of a NIH sponsored study, HHS
HHS
-Medicine:*Hyperglycemic hyperosmolar state, a complication of diabetes-Individual high schools:*Hackensack High School - Hackensack, New Jersey, US*Hackettstown High School - Hackettstown, New Jersey, US*Hadleigh High School - Hadleigh, Suffolk, England...
’ Diabetes Prevention Program (DDP) clinical trial. This study has shown that individuals with pre-diabetes (those whose blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet diabetic), can delay and possibly even prevent type 2 diabetes simply by making moderate changes in diet and exercise that enable them to lose five to seven percent of their body weight
Body weight
The term body weight is used in daily English speech as well as in the contexts of biological and medical sciences to describe the mass of an organism's body. Body weight is measured in kilograms throughout the world, although in some countries it is still measured in pounds or stones and pounds...
. Regular physical activity such as a brisk thirty minute walk five times per week, and modest weight loss
Weight loss
Weight loss, in the context of medicine, health or physical fitness, is a reduction of the total body mass, due to a mean loss of fluid, body fat or adipose tissue and/or lean mass, namely bone mineral deposits, muscle, tendon and other connective tissue...
could cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by more than half in pre-diabetic individuals. These lifestyle changes were shown to be especially successful in individuals over age 65. HBFP has every confidence that these methods will prove effective in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods.
The Healthy Black Family Project provides the framework for all of these programs, and tracks the progress of the families and individuals who are involved. Approximately 6000 individuals have enrolled in the program.
"The overall goal of the Healthy Black Family Project,” said Dr. Angela Ford, associate director of the center, “is to close the gap in health status between blacks and whites through coordinated community mobilization that is culturally relevant and grounded in a public health approach."
Take A Health Professional to the People
A serious gap or disparity in health outcomes and access to medical care continues to exist for racial or ethnic groups, despite the efforts of government, community leaders, and healthcare providers. The problem is complex and entrenched, involving policy barriers, as well as cultural, social, and economic issues, and therefore demands fresh, creative solutions.Take a Health Professional to the People Day is just the sort of innovative solution needed to address this serious disparity problem. Part of the Health Advocates In Reach (HAIR) program, it sends doctors, nurse, pharmacists and health educators into the barber shops and beauty salons of underserved communities to deliver health screenings and health education
Health education
Health education is the profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health...
in a familiar, comfortable environment. Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, the director of CMH explains, "Far too many African Americans have no ‘medical home
Medical home
The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home , is defined as "a health care setting that facilitates partnerships between individual patients, and their personal providers, and when appropriate, the patient’s family". It is "an approach to providing comprehensive primary care...
’ to access health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
services, so government programs that promote ‘taking a loved one to the doctor’ are not as effective for this community. Therefore, CMH created Take a Health Professional to the People Day. By focusing our efforts on a single day, we believe we can help generate a greater understanding of the importance of regular health screenings while at the same time reaching people who tend to have the least access to healthcare."
The Center for Minority Health inaugurated “Take a Health Professional to the People Day in 2002, starting with just three barber shops and salons. The program now includes nine beauty salons and barber shops, and over one hundred health professionals, some of whom continue to work with the shops in an on-going effort to provide health and wellness activities there.
In 2007, CMH linked forces with the Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice and medical research group specializing in treating difficult patients . Patients are referred to Mayo Clinic from across the U.S. and the world, and it is known for innovative and effective treatments. Mayo Clinic is known for being at the top of...
Urban Immersion Program for ‘Take a Health Professional to the People Day’. Eight Mayo staff members traveled to Pittsburgh to gain valuable experience in delivering health care in a non-traditional setting. Dr. Sherine Gabriel, director of Education Resources for the Mayo Clinic Center for Translational Science Activities (CTSA), states, “We created the Urban Immersion Program in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Thomas and the CMH to help our students, faculty, researchers and physicians learn and apply these innovative community outreach strategies here at Mayo Clinic.”
Health Disparity Working Groups
Health Disparity Working Groups are charged with planning and organizing health promotionHealth promotion
Health promotion has been defined by the World Health Organization's 2005 Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a Globalized World as "the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health"...
activities that will be implemented during National Minority Health Month (NMHM), which occurs every April. Each group in this diverse collection, brought together from the academic community, health providers, health promotion and human service organizations, and community representatives, organizes health promotion events that focus on the seven health disparity priorities of CMH.
These NMHM community-based events and activities are deeply rooted in the history of the Black community. They are modeled on the Health Improvement Week, which under the leadership of Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
evolved into the National Negro Health Movement, and was annually observed for 35 years. Local NMHM activities are planned to be of value and interest for the entire family – including health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
, mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
, and wellness screenings, as well as physical activity and entertainment that features the world famous Double Dutch Divas.
In addition to their responsibilities of planning for NMHM, the Working Groups are also valuable as an ideal forum where materials and ideas related to research studies and the EXPORT Health communication campaign can be field tested. Representing, as they do, a wide-base of constituents and organizations, they also provide a large network for disseminating valuable information to the community.
Healthy Class of 2010
The Healthy Class of 2010 is a multi-year campaign designed to prevent diseaseDisease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
and to promote health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
among students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools
Pittsburgh Public Schools
Pittsburgh Public Schools is the public school district in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and adjacent Mount Oliver.The combined land area of these municipalities is with a population of 342,503 according to the 2000 census. In August 2005, the superintendent became Mark Roosevelt. His tenure ends...
. Initiated in the 2003-2004 academic year, targeting those students who entered sixth grade that year, the program has a twofold goal: 1) to enable staff to systematically engage every student who entered sixth grade in 2003 in “active living”; and 2) to increase students’ knowledge, attitudes and healthy choices regarding physical activity, nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
, and a tobacco-free lifestyle. The program, which partners with the Pittsburgh Public School System and the Allegheny County Health Department, follows the student’s progress toward achieving these goals, tracking them over a seven-year period through the year 2010, when they graduate. The Center for Minority Health is working toward making the Class of 2010 the healthiest students ever to graduate from the Pittsburgh Public School System, to coincide with the deadline set for Healthy People 2010, the nation’s health promotion
Health promotion
Health promotion has been defined by the World Health Organization's 2005 Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a Globalized World as "the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health"...
program.
This unique collaboration between the Center for Minority Health (CMH), Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools, focuses on partnership building between school administrators, teachers, students and their families, and the public health community. This creates a unique opportunity to address community needs of eliminating health disparities by customizing relevant interventions to address student health issues.
Academy for Health Equity
Efforts to eliminate health disparities have often met with limited results over the past decade. This is primarily because too often many activities that are designed to address specific aspects of health disparities have been uncoordinated and happen piecemeal. The Center for Minority Health recognized the need for an organization that can coordinate these individual efforts. In January 2006, together with other concerned researchers, community advocates and health educators, they met during the second Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health National Summit to Eliminate Health Disparities to discuss forming such an organization.The Colorado Trust, a non-profit foundation with interests in minority health, supported a second meeting on this topic in June 2007. Here, the CMH and other stakeholders further discussed initial strategies to advance the development and formation of the Academy for Health Equity – the organization that can bring together all the diverse stakeholders to exchange ideas, disseminate information, and engage in research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
and training in a coordinated effort to promote health equity for all populations.
Presently, the HHS Office of Minority Health is providing the technical assistance necessary for the Academy as it develops the infrastructure and means necessary to effectively address health disparities through concepts of health equity. The Academy for Health Equity held its inaugural meeting in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
on June 26-June 27, 2008.
Minority Health Archive
The Center for Minority Health, in collaboration with the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, created an online archive of print and electronic media that is pertinent to the health of minorities in the four, nationally recognized minority groups - BlacksBlack people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
/African Americans, Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. The Minority Health Archive is a free service, providing research opportunities and an online reservoir for collecting any important information relevant to the health of minorities.
The goal of the Minority Health Archive has been to serve as the primary repository for all material within the field of minority health – including journal articles, government reports, books, conference proceedings, Web-based materials, theses/dissertations, or any other material that can make a significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge in this field of study. To this end, any user of the archive can submit material to the Archive after completing a simple registration process (though only material relevant to minority health with be accepted and posted to the live archive by the editorial staff).
In 2010, editorship for the Minority Health Archive moved to the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
's Center for Health Equity, although the system is still hosted and maintained by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. Concurrent with this change, the scope of the archive was reconceived to include broader issues of health equity and health disparity and was renamed as the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive.
Underground Railroad Bicycle Route
The Underground Railroad Bicycle Route is a national project in which the Center for Minority Health collaborated with the Adventure Cycling AssociationAdventure Cycling Association
The Adventure Cycling Association is a national cycling association in the United States which provides services for cycle-tourists, publishes maps and campaigns for better cycling facilities. Its headquarters are in Missoula, Montana...
. This 2,100 mile bicycle route, from Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
to Owen Sound, Ontario
Owen Sound, Ontario
Owen Sound , the county seat of Grey County, is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada...
, follows one of the historic Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
trails that escaped slaves would take to freedom. The goals of this project are threefold; to encourage greater diversity in recreational bicycling, to improve the health of Black Americans through biking, and to encourage interest in African American cultural history.
EXPORT Health
EXPORT Health, or The Center for Excellence EXPORT Health was established within the Center for Minority Health in 2002, thanks to a six million dollar grant (grant no. 5P60 MD-000-207-02)from the National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
(NIH), National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD)through Project EXPORT (Excellence in Partnership through Community Outreach and Research on Disparities in Health and Training). EXPORT Health enables academic scholars to collaborate with public, private and community organizations to focus on minority health disparity and work toward eliminating these disparities. Working through the Center for Minority Health, EXPORT Health helps the University of Pittsburgh strengthen the research and training infrastructure for the study of minority health disparities, and the goal of eliminating those disparities.
Research Center of Excellence in Minority Health Disparities
The Center for Minority Health is establishing the Research Center of Excellence in Minority Health Disparities, using a five-year, $4.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Researchers there will be tasked to study evidence-based strategies for educating African Americans about disease prevention, giving them the tools to improve lifestyle habits. The new research center will work in co-operation with CMH’s Healthy Black Family Project, which has already enrolled 6,000 individuals. One resulting study will focus on one hundred African-American families’ nutrition and fitness habits, assessing them, and identifying targeted interventions.The new center will also partner with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh’s psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
department to explore the link between chronic disease and depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
, and to evaluate problem-solving therapy
Therapy
This is a list of types of therapy .* Adventure therapy* Animal-assisted therapy* Aquatic therapy* Aromatherapy* Art and dementia* Art therapy* Authentic Movement* Behavioral therapy* Bibliotherapy* Buteyko Method* Chemotherapy...
as a means for preventing depression. To facilitate early intervention and prevention, the psychiatry faculty will also train Healthy Black Family Project staff to qualify them to proactively identify those program participants who may be at risk for depression.