By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Dr. Debra Wallace.
(336) 334-5371
Posted 10-11-07
GREENSBORO, NC – Armed with a $6.6 million, five-year National Institutes of Health grant, UNCG is mounting a series of projects that are designed to focus on reducing minority health disparities for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS in the Piedmont Triad.
UNCG’s TRIAD (Teamwork in Research and Intervention to Alleviate Disparities) Center for Health Disparities will launch projects to promote good health practices among minority and poor citizens. The center will also work to improve access to and understanding of health care services.
Dr. Debra Wallace, a professor of nursing at UNCG and principal investigator for the project, said researchers went straight to the source to find out what the greatest health needs were across the 12-county Piedmont Triad.
Many areas across the region are considered medically underserved and have diabetes, cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS rates much higher than the national average. The project is one of only a handful of awards NIH is making this year through its Excellence in Partnerships, Outreach, Research and Training (EXPORT) program. It is an outgrowth of an earlier $1.06 million grant from NIH.
“We asked the community, ‘What is it you need?” Wallace said. She added that TRIAD will spread its message through civic groups, churches, clinics, wellness centers, and, yes, even barber shops. “We’re trying some fairly unique individualized efforts for people and not just to people.”
“Part of this university’s role in the community is to find ways to help people maintain their health,” Wallace said. “The minority populations in our state have very poor health in the areas of cardiovascular problems, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. This project will address those issues.”
The need is in the numbers, Wallace said. Thirteen percent of North Carolinians live in poverty. African-Americans make up more than 30 percent of the population in central North Carolina, while the Latino population has increased by more than 400 percent over the past decade. According to N.C. Division of Public Health statistics, African-Americans are 1.5 times more likely to develop diabetes than whites. A 2005 NCDPH report shows that rates of new HIV infections in the state were 58.9 per 100,000 for African- Americans and 20.6 per 100,000 for Latinos. The rate of new infections among whites was much lower – 7.6 per 100,000.
On the research front, Wallace said the TRIAD project will improve the health of minority citizens by expanding community involvement in research and by disseminating health information to the community. Two other outcomes will be increasing the number of, and support for, health disparity researchers from minority populations; supporting research on health disparities with a focus on new means of intervention and prevention.
The project spans the university, involving almost 30 faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences; the schools of Education, Health and Human Performance, Human Environmental Sciences, and Nursing; and the centers for Biotechnology, Genetics and Health Research and Youth, Family and Community Partnerships. NC Central University will partner with UNCG as a subcontractor, lending additional faculty and students to the effort.
TRIAD’s research projects will involve interdisciplinary teams lead by health professionals. A total of 14 studies will be staggered over the five-year grant period. Research and education projects include:
•Recruiting African-American women to serve as peer educators for diabetes prevention in their communities. Peer educators will be trained to help other African-American women, ages 50 and older, improve their lifestyles, especially related to diet and activity, in order to prevent or delay diabetes onset. This will be an eight-week program.
•Assessing the health risks of African-American male teens who are at risk for or who have high blood pressure. Participants will receive free assessments of blood pressure, weight, meal patterns, and other measures; an interview; and a questionnaire about health and lifestyle.
•Providing free teaching sessions, telephone monitoring and support, and motivation to African-Americans to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes. This program stresses how persons can eat healthier, maintain or lose weight, and improve their physical activity based on a program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
•Working with public schools to improve the physical and mental health of rural Latino adolescents. School nurses and counselors, along with project staff, will staff health fair stations and educational programs to help Latino teens deal with health problems. The goal is improved academic success rates for non-native English speakers.
•Working with African-American teen girls and their mothers to prevent risky sexual behavior in the girls. The teens will meet separately with each other and discuss risky sexual behavior, and will receive information on the topic. Mothers will also share their experiences and engage in a training program to help their daughters avoid risks.
•Working with Latino adults who have diabetes to manage the disease and prevent complications through a family-based intervention. Participants will receive home visits and blood sugar screenings during the 10-week program.
“This award is extraordinary for UNCG, and serves as a model for collaborative research to address an issue of critical importance to the health of the community and nation,” said UNCG Provost David H. Perrin. “The competition is fierce for funding of projects of this size and scope, but this is the kind of project that universities like UNCG need to undertake to help at-risk populations.”
“This is a team effort,” Wallace said. “This is about this campus making efforts to meet the needs of this community. It’s a major commitment of this campus to help our future.”
For more information on TRIAD, call (336) 334-3713.
This project is supported by grant #P20MD002289 from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities or the National Institutes of Health.
