Planning for the 30th annual Minority Health Conference

A flyer advertising this year’s Minority Health Conference

Since 1977, the Minority Student Caucus (MSC) has worked hard to organize an annual minority health Conference. While small in its beginnings, this conference has grown to a large attendance and gained support from the community. Currently, the Minority Student Caucus is expecting between 450-500 people to attend the 30^th Annual Minority Health Conference (Conference) on February 27, 2009 and over a thousand to tune in to the broadcast of the keynote address.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Our World, Our Community: Building Bridges for Health Equality.” Conference planners chose this name to reflect the addition of “global” to the School’s, with global including both international and domestic, and draw attention to health inequalities that especially affect many communities. Guest speakers for Conference sessions will share how their research here or abroad can be translated into improved public health and vice versa. 

Planning for this event began a year ago and has involved many students and organizations at UNC and on campus throughout the US. After being elected co-chairs of the Conference last spring, Stephanie Baker, a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE), and Kevin Wu, a masters student in HBHE have worked hard in planning the. They immediately started on “getting the ball rolling” in terms of fundraising and obtaining local grants and contracts with the Friday Center (part of the UNC) and the NC Institute of Public Health or NCIPH (part of the School).

Serious planning for the Conference began in September of 2008. Any student interested in minority health issues and who volunteered to help, was in! The following briefly describes the organizing committees:

• The Speaker Committee organized the ten speaker sessions and an advocacy sessions, and helped with the keynote speaker.

• The Publicity Committee contacted faculty, staff, students, community members and othes to let them know about Conference opportunities. They also plan to have students Twitter from conference sessions. See info below.

• The Fundraising Committee solicited and collected funds to pay for speaker travel and lodging, the use of the Friday Center and miscellaneous extras like food, costs of publicity, broadcasting, and services from NCIPH.

• The Posters Committee organized the presentation of research posters with authors from around the University and nation. 

• The Exhibitors Committee invited businesses and other organizations from around the community to publicize their services at the Conference and arranged for their exhibits. 

• The Broadcast Committee arranged for the recording and networking of the keynote address for the Conference with the outside community. 

• The Evaluation Committee worked on obtaining feedback from the event and the keynote broadcast primarily via electronic evaluations. 

The William Smalls, Jr. Keynote Address, which is the first session of the Conference, will be recorded in the morning and broadcasted online at 2 pm. This broadcast includes a live question and answer session with the guest speaker via the UNC School of Journalism. 

For the first time ever, this year’s conference is being held in conjunction with similar conferences throughout the country. Though they are not of the magnitude of the MSC Minority Health Conference, the University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, University of Chicago, and Tulane are simultaneously holding a health conferences at their respective schools of public health this year. All of these conferences will all be tuning in to view the UNC’s keynote speaker, Dr. Barbara Wallace.

Kevin Wu, co-chair of the Conference, states that “I think this year has been smoother because Stephanie and I were on the committee last year, and we also have a really good committee. I think everything is on the ball.” We are looking forward to a successful 30^th Annual Minority Health Conference.

For more information on the Minority Health Conference, check out this website.

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Got ideas for stories about students? Involved in interesting events coming up? Email Alice or Chirag, student assistants in the SPH Office of Student Affairs.