Minority health videoconference takes stock of health disparities progress

Dr. Victor Schoenbach

“It’s now more than 25 years since the Heckler Report focused the nation’s attention on the problem of racial/ethnic health disparities – and some 12 years since the elimination of such disparities became official U.S. public health policy,” noted Victor Schoenbach, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology and director of the Minority Health Project. “[The conference explored] what we can learn from the successes and failures of policies and programs under this initiative.”

The interactive conference, “Health Equity: Progress and Pitfalls,” was presented to the public health school’s Summer Public Health Fellows and to participants in the N.C. Health Careers Access Program in the UNC School of Social Work’s Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building auditorium and broadcast to an enthusiastic Internet audience.

Conference panelists (l-r) Dr. Jeffrey Henderson, Dr. Cookie Newsom and Dr. Brian Smedley respond to questions from the audience.

UNC alumna Barbara Pullen-Smith, MPH, director of the North Carolina Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities (OMHHD), served as moderator for a distinguished panel of public health and diversity leaders that included:

• Jeffrey A. Henderson, MD, MPH, president and chief executive officer, Black Hills Center for American Indian Health, in Rapid City, S.D.;
• Krista M. Perreira, PhD, associate professor of public policy in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences and adjunct associate professor of maternal and child health, health behavior and heath education, and health policy and management in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health;
• Brian D. Smedley, PhD, vice president and director, Health Policy Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in Washington, D.C.; and
• M. Cookie Newsom, PhD, UNC’s director of diversity education and assessment.

The videoconference webcast is available on the public health school’s website.

Learn more about the Minority Health Project and past summer videoconferences at www.minority.unc.edu.

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.