Community Outreach & Authentic Partnerships

Partnering with communities that are experiencing racial and ethnic health disparities will focus efforts on eliminating these disparities, and foster opportunities to learn from them.

Take a leadership role on the university campus to initiate or advance campus-wide support for the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

Public health schools and programs can employ many ways to assume leadership roles on their campuses to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. For example, at the University of Pittsburgh, faculty members from the health sciences schools formed their own Sullivan Commission Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Diversity. In June 2007, this taskforce submitted a report, “The Urgency of Now: Recruiting and Retaining Racially and Ethnically Diverse Professionals in the Health Professions,” to the Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences. The report lists 17 recommendations, actions that the schools can take to address the same issues contemplated on a national scale by the Sullivan Commission, namely to change the culture of health professions schools, increasing diversity in the health professions; explore new and nontraditional paths to the health professions; and make these commitments at the highest levels of the university.

Since submission of the report, the University of Pittsburgh has hired an Assistant Vice Chancellor for the Office of Health Sciences Diversity and soon will name a new Diversity Program Director as well as student and faculty advisory boards. This example illustrates how public health faculty members can collaborate with their peers throughout a university to support efforts working toward the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

Cultivate partnerships with communities to address their racial and ethnic health disparities.

Many SPHs or faculty members work directly with communities to identify and address public health issues. In a number of cases, racial and ethnic makeup is directly variated with health disparities.

CCPH receives support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to work collaboratively and intensively with teams from 12 schools and graduate programs of public health. The partnerships develop and implement strategic action plans to become fully engaged institutions with a focus on eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. Team members include academic administrators, faculty, staff, students, and community partners who have made a commitment to collective action. Not only does this provide valuable research to the university, but it obliges the university’s role as a responsible citizen in the community.

The 12 participating teams were selected from a pool of 26 applicants. The finalists provided evidence of commitment and participation from institutional and community leaders, made clear and compelling cases for their readiness to invest in authentic community-campus partnerships, and demonstrated the capability to engage other segments of their campuses as partners. The CCPH Consultancy Network, the organization’s training and technical assistance arm, is supporting the 12 teams. The initiative also sponsors teleconferences, identifies promising practices, and produces resource materials.

Create multidisciplinary efforts to respond to racial and ethnic health disparities by incorporating other academic disciplines in the effort (e.g., urban studies, political science, education, social work).

The University of Michigan developed the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) as part of the university’s commitment to address complex diversity issues within higher education and other major social institutions. The NCID mission is to focus on active engagement in a diverse society and work toward building productive and inclusive communities at the University of Michigan and beyond. Programs and initiatives include faculty development, a faculty and center fellows program, lecture series, national meetings, facilitation of proposal development, and establishment of strategic campus and external partnerships. NCID is a campus-wide effort, engaging all of the university’s schools, including humanities, sciences, and engineering.