SUNY Downstate Granted $5.5M to Reduce Health Disparities in Minorities

The Brooklyn Health Disparities Center (BHDC), a joint venture of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health and the Brooklyn President's Office, has been granted a $5.5 million grant over five years to reduce health disparities among minorities and new immigrants in the borough. 

Granted by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health, the grant will support community engagement to drive research, training and policy. 

"…For far too long, our community has been burdened by a disproportionate share of largely preventable illness, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and AIDS," said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz in a release detailing the news. 

Let Ditmas Park Patch save you time. Get great local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone everyday with our free newsletter. Simple, fast sign-up here.

Dr. Moro O. Salifu, professor of medicine and chief of nephrology at SUNY Downstate, noted that this grant will also unify the educational community.

"This grant will bring together additional community partners and build a base of people across the education pipeline – including students and faculty from high school to the college and graduate levels – trained in identifying health disparities and ways to eliminate them,” he said. 

“The new grant will support the implementation of intervention research projects on two community prioritized issues in non-traditional settings,” said Mark Stewart, MD, PhD, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Downstate and director of the grant’s Research Core. 

The projects will include research, community outreach initiatives and the ability to train high school, undergraduate, and graduate-level underrepresented minorities to address health disparities.