Building community is theme for UNC's Minority Health Conference
| February 10, 2010 | |
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The Minority Student Caucus at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health will host the 31st annual Minority Health Conference, “Building Community in the Age of Information: Fighting Health Inequality in the Modern World,” on Friday, Feb. 26, at The William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill.
Dr. Robert Fullilove
Robert E. Fullilove, EdD, will present the 12th Annual William T. Small Jr. Keynote Lecture. His talk, “Community Organizing and Community Building: Public Health Watchwords for the 21st Century,” is inspired by his work as a community organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. “Much of what I have done in public health comes straight from that experience,” notes Fullilove.
Welcoming remarks will begin at 9 a.m., with the keynote lecture scheduled for 9:30 a.m. The lecture also will be available as a free webcast at 2 p.m., followed by a live question-and-answer session.
Fullilove is associate dean for community and minority affairs, professor of clinical sociomedical sciences, and co-director of the community research group at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He also co-directs a new degree program in urbanism and community health in Columbia’s Department of Sociomedical Sciences.
Author of numerous articles in the area of minority health, Fullilove has served on Institute of Medicine study committees that produced reports on substance abuse and addiction, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and damp indoor spaces and health. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Journal of Public Health Policy and has received two distinguished teaching awards from the Mailman School of Public Health.
“The conference’s focus this year on building community in a networked world could not be more timely,” says Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Rimer said she could guarantee that attendees “will learn new information, think about challenging issues in new ways and be awed by the talent of our students.”
The conference, initiated by the UNC Minority Student Caucus in 1977, is the nation’s oldest and largest student-run conference. The program was developed to highlight health issues of concern to people of color and to attract students interested in minority concerns to public health.
Aprajita Anand and Emily Brostek, master’s students in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, are co-chairs of this year’s event. Their planning committee has arranged for concurrent sessions, a poster exhibition and several interactive sessions in addition to the keynote. Sessions include a presentation by CeaseFire, an evidence-based public health approach to reducing gun violence in Chicago, and a health literacy workshop.
“In the current financial crisis, minorities have been disproportionately affected. Now more than ever, the Minority Health Conference is a very relevant piece of the puzzle in terms of what’s happening in this country, and we think people will get a lot out of attending this year’s conference,” Anand said.
This year’s sponsors include The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Dean’s Office, the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, the UNC Graduate and Professional Student Federation, and the Office of the Chancellor. Other sponsors are listed online.
As the conference venue usually fills to capacity, early registration is advised. Registration rates will increase after February 12.
For more information about the conference, the webcast, or to register, visit www.minority.unc.edu.
Minority Health Conference contact: Aprajita Anand (aprajita_anand@gmail.com) or Emily Brostek (ebrostek@gmail.com).
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.
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