Mission: The mission of the Center is to “improve the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that address health disparities and gaps.”
Goal: The overarching goal of the Center is to promote understanding of racial ethnic and minority health disparities through intensive, multidisciplinary research projects and approaches that integrates social and environmental factors within a multilevel framework to positively affect the quality of life and racial/ethnic minority health.
Objective: The overall objective is to reduce health disparities in obesity in adult African Americans to improve health outcomes and quality of life for these obesity at-risk populations.
Purpose: The purpose of the Center is to enhance the level of research, research training and education and community engagement and outreach excellence and productivity to accelerate understanding and improvements in racial/ethnic minority health and health disparities.
Specific Aim 1. To develop and maintain an administrative and institutional infrastructure to support the research as a whole.
Specific Aim 2. To build a strong research infrastructure and capacity building.
Specific Aim 3. To provide exemplary research training and education activities to students and junior faculty from health disparity populations to increase the number of well trained researchers from minority and health disparity populations.
Specific Aim 4: To engage minority and health disparity communities in effective and sustainable partnerships and activities for improving the health of their communities, increasing the numbers of individuals from minority and health disparity populations engaged in research activities for increasing health literacy and knowledge of health disparities.