Panel to Focus on Health Disparities Research at UTEP
The American Medical Association’s Commission to End Health Care Disparities will hold a three-day meeting from Wednesday, Sept. 2 through Friday, Sept. 4 on The University of Texas at El Paso campus.
UTEP alumni Dr. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), and Dr. Willarda Edwards, president of the National Medical Association (NMA), will attend the meeting along with Dr. Elena Rios, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA). The commission meeting will focus on health care along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On day 2 of the conference, Hispanic health and border health research at UTEP will be the focus of the panel on “Investments in Minority Institution Capacity-Building.”
The panel will take place from 10 a.m. to noon., Thursday, Sept. 3, in the Bioscience Research Building, Biological Sciences Seminar Room 2.168, on the UTEP campus.
University faculty will discuss the pioneering research being conducted in the bioscience building’s laboratories and facilities to address such health concerns as Chagas disease, adolescent tobacco use, HIV and obesity along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The panel’s first speaker, Sidney McNairy, Ph.D., D.Sc., director of the research infrastructure division at the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will talk about the NCRR's Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) and related NIH programs. The RCMI is designed to enhance the research capacity and infrastructure at minority colleges and universities that offer doctorates in health sciences.
McNairy will be followed by Robert Kirken, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Biological Sciences and director of UTEP’s Border Biomedical Research Center (BBRC). The center focuses on infectious diseases, toxicology, neuroscience and metabolic disorders. Kirken will discuss the BBRC’s core labs, capabilities and research impact.
Other panelists include: June Kan-Mitchell, Ph.D., professor, Department of Biological Sciences; Kristine Garza, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biological Sciences; Igor C. Almeida, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biological Sciences; Laura E. O’Dell, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Psychology.
The panel will be followed by a question and answer session.