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1st Annual UAB Minority Health & Research Center Conference

April 2003

To introduce the Minority Health and Research Center to the academic and health communities/systems, we conducted the first MHRC Annual Conference: "Eliminating Health Disparities: Equal Care, Equal Outcomes," on April 3-4, 2003. The conference was preceded by a reception at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on April 3rd in which approximately 100 individuals representing academic and community organizations gathered to celebrate. On April 4th a one day conference was held at the Sheraton Civic Center Medical Forum. More than 300 conference attendees participated in the conference.

The national and local speakers presented an overview of healthcare disparities and addressed the mission and goals of the MHRC. Keynote speakers included President Carol Garrison, PhD; William Koopman, MD, Chair of the UAB School of Medicine; Artur Davis, US Congressman for Alabama, followed by the celebrity speaker, Charles Barkley, former NBA All Star. Other conference speakers included Groesbeck Parham, MD, Cancer Center Senior Scientist Herman A. Taylor, Jr., MD, Director and Overall Principal Investigator of the Jackson Heart Study, a landmark project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Office of Research on Minority Health of the National Institutes of Health; Sandral Hullett, MD, MPH, Chief Executive Officer of Jefferson Health System/Cooper Green Hospital; UAB; Sharina D. Person, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biostatistics; Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine; Associate Director, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program; and Director, Chicago NIDDK Diabetes Research and Training Center Prevention and Control Core, at the University of Chicago; and Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management with Johns Hopkins Health System.

The conference was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD). The conference was a collaborative effort of the MHRC, the UAB Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE) and the UAB Division of Continuing Medical Education.

The evaluation responses from conference participants were positive and reinforced the plan to hold similar conferences in the future. The Center hopes to partner with other schools and centers to develop programming for future conferences.