Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Author: search.filters.author.Thomas, Stephen BSubject: search.filters.subject.Practice

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Beyond the cathedral: building trust to engage the African American community in health promotion and disease prevention.
    (2009) Ford, Angela F; Reddick, Karen; Browne, Mario C; Robins, Anthony; Thomas, Stephen B; Crouse Quinn, Sandra
    Effective efforts to eliminate health disparities must be grounded in strong community partnerships and trusting relationships between academic institutions and minority communities. However, there are often barriers to such efforts, including the frequent need to rely on time-limited funding mechanisms that take categorical approaches. This article provides an overview of health promotion and disease prevention projects implemented through the Community Outreach and Information Dissemination Core (COID) of the Center for Minority Health, within the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. The COID is one of five Cores that comprised the University of Pittsburgh's NIH Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach, and Research on Disparities in Health and Training (EXPORT Health) funded from 2002 to 2007 by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Based in large part on the success of the community engagement activities, in 2007, the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health, designated the CMH as a Research Center of Excellence on Minority Health Disparities. COID major initiatives included the Community Research Advisory Board, Health Disparity Working Groups, Health Advocates in Reach, Healthy Class of 2010, and the Healthy Black Family Project. Lessons learned may provide guidance to other academic institutions, community-based organizations, and health departments who seek to engage minority communities in changing social norms to support health promotion and disease prevention.
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    Mobilizing a region to redesign a local system of care: lessons from a community-based learning collaborative.
    (2010) Keyser, Donna J; Pincus, Harold Alan; Thomas, Stephen B; Castle, Nicholas; Dembosky, Jacob; Firth, Raymond; Greenberg, Michael; Pollack, Nancy Kaczynski; Reis, Evelyn Cohen; Sansing, Veronica V; Scholle, Sarah
    Local efforts to redesign systems of care offer fertile ground for community-based participatory research approaches to take hold and flourish. Drawing on the experiences of a learning collaborative of maternal and child healthcare stakeholders in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, this article describes 8 action steps for operationalizing key community-based participatory research principles in the context of local systems change. Highlights of the subsequent evolution of the collaborative and its work are provided, as well as comments regarding the generalizability and usefulness of this approach for other public health and community stakeholders who are interested in mobilizing collaborative action for systems change.
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    BCHS 2524- Overview of Minority Health and Health Disparities in the US
    (2006) Thomas, Stephen B; Gilbert, Keon L
    Understanding health disparities involves a critical analysis of historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions that have produced an inequitable health status for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. While we also recognize that disparities exist along socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation and other factors, this class will focus on disparities in racial and ethnic minority communities. Issues of gender, SES and other factors will be examined as they intersect race and ethnicity, and further influence disparities in health. Minority health and health disparities have gained considerable attention from the recent publication of Healthy People 2010 Report, which lists as its two goals: 1) improve the quality of life for all citizens, and 2) eliminate health disparities. The purpose of this class is to introduce basic issues that underlie health disparities. We will gain a better understanding of the relationships of social and environmental phenomena and the health of minority communities. This course will include current literature and foster discussions that will examine health disparities, explore social and environmental determinants of those disparities, critically review measurement issues, and determine public health’s response to these disparities. Students should seek to critically reflect on their personal and professional roles in eliminating health disparities. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
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    Overview of Minority Health and Health Disparities in the US
    (2006) Thomas, Stephen B; Gilbert, Keon L
    Understanding health disparities involves a critical analysis of historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions that have produced an inequitable health status for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. While we also recognize that disparities exist along socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation and other factors, this class will focus on disparities in racial and ethnic minority communities. Issues of gender, SES and other factors will be examined as they intersect race and ethnicity, and further influence disparities in health. Minority health and health disparities have gained considerable attention from the recent publication of Healthy People 2010 Report, which lists as its two goals: 1) improve the quality of life for all citizens, and 2) eliminate health disparities. The purpose of this class is to introduce basic issues that underlie health disparities. We will gain a better understanding of the relationships of social and environmental phenomena and the health of minority communities. This course will include current literature and foster discussions that will examine health disparities, explore social and environmental determinants of those disparities, critically review measurement issues, and determine public health’s response to these disparities. Students should seek to critically reflect on their personal and professional roles in eliminating health disparities. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
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    The Color Line: Race Matters in the Elimination of Health Disparities
    (2001) Thomas, Stephen B
    The “color line” is not fixed but ripples through time, finding expression at distinct stages of our development as a nation. As the meaning of race has changed over time, its burdens and privileges have shifted among population groups. At one time in our history, for instance, the Irish and Italians were considered “non-White,” along with other immigrants who were not descendants of the early Anglo-Saxon Protestant settlers. In this issue of the Journal, Gerald Oppenheimer traces the color line through the course of American history.1 He demonstrates how the original language of White racial differences began with the anxious response of early Americans to waves of immigration, beginning in the 1840s when the Irish (or Celts) entered US ports, followed by nationals from Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. Over time, the descendants of these “White ethnic groups” became the monolithic Caucasian race, the majority population, superior in all respects to the Black people of African descent.1