Centers to examine health disparities

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued grants totaling $60.5 million over five years to create eight Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities, designed to support cutting-edge research to understand and reduce differences in health outcomes, access and care.

One center will be led by researchers at the U-M Health System and The Ohio State University. The $1.455 million National Cancer Institute grant will fund efforts to increase early detection of cervical cancer in Appalachian women.

"Cancer is an important health issue in underserved populations," says Dr. Mack Ruffin, associate professor of family medicine at the Medical School and one of the researchers involved in the new center. "The center will initially focus on the goal of understanding why high rates of cervical cancer are found in Appalachian Ohio."

Four institutes or offices within the National Institutes of Health—the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research—will support the transdisciplinary research to examine how the social and physical environment, behavioral factors, and biologic pathways interact to determine health and disease in populations.

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