Advisory Council Members

John Ruffin, Ph.D., NCMHD Director

John Ruffin addressing the Advisory Council

NCMHD Advisory Council Meeting Winter 2008
Goals and Accomplishments

NCMHD Director John Ruffin, Ph.D., outlined a far reaching agenda for the Center during 2008 at the seventeenth meeting of the National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities. “Our successes over the past seven years give us confidence to move even more boldly in the future,” said Ruffin. The Center’s chief priorities include:

• Establishing an Office of Innovation and Program Coordination
• Implementing the recommendations of the 2006 Institute of Medicine and NCMHD Ad Hoc Committee reports on the NIH health disparities research plan
• Establishing a data center to improve data management, collection and analysis
• Increasing outreach to the extramural community to increase the number and quality of grant applications

To underscore the successes achieved by NCMHD’s programs, the Council and staff heard presentations from grantees showcasing their research to alleviate the health burdens of the underserved and eliminate health disparities.

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RIMI - Research Infrastructure in Minority Institutions   

Lily McNair-Roberts, Ph.D.,

Dr. Lily McNair-Roberts, Associate Provost of Research at Spelman College, told the Council that the RIMI grants it has received have literally transformed the study of science at this small liberal arts college for women in Atlanta, GA.  She said at Spelman, RIMI has been a success.  It has achieved its goal of helping to create the infrastructure – lab space, start up packages, inter-university collaborations, and administration – to support a vastly expanded scientific research agenda at this undergraduate institution. Spelman received its first NCMHD RIMI grant in 2002 and was awarded a competitive renewal in 2007.Among the accomplishments supported by RIMI:

• RIMI supported scientists have received three patents
• Scientific publications have increased five-fold
• External grants have doubled
• Spelman produces more African American students who go on to earn a Ph.D. in the sciences than any other school except Howard University

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LRP – Loan Repayment Program 

Joyce Javier, M.D., USC

Dr. Joyce Javier, visiting assistant professor in Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC) told the Council that her research would not have been possible without the support she received from the NCMHD Loan Repayment Program (LRP).

Dr. Javier, who is Filipino, faced financial burdens that affect many minority scientists. She said her indebtedness following medical school threatened her dream — to establish herself as a serious researcher in health disparities and to focus her work among Filipinos. She said, “with-out the LRP I would have had to moonlight in hospital emergency rooms to pay my bills. That would mean taking time away from doing research.”

But she has been able to follow her dream. Dr. Javier is focusing on mental health issues – psychological distress and mental health care utilization – among Filipino adolescents in California. Filipinos are the second largest Asian population in California but Dr. Javier found few studies involving this community.

The study she reported to Council found, that compared to whites, Filipino adolescents suffered more psychological distress and received less counseling for that distress. Risk factors for psychological distress include low socio-economic status and low educational levels. She says this research was instrumental in her being selected as a faculty member at USC.

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COE - Center of Excellence 

Glorisa Canino, Ph.D., Univ. of Puerto Rico

Glorisa Canino, Ph.D., director, Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, University of Puerto Rico and Margarita Alegria, Ph.D., director, Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research, Cambridge Health Alliance, described a unique partnership between Harvard University and the University of Puerto Rico. This NCMHD Center of Excellence is working to combat two serious health issues in the Puerto Rican community – asthma and mental illness.

The Right Question Project empowers patients to take control of their mental health care. As a result, patients report feeling more engaged with their caregiver and were four times less likely to miss appointments.

Margarita Alegria, Ph.D, Univ. of Puerto Rico

CALMA, (Controla, Apoderate y Logra el Control del Asthma) ("Empower Yourself and Take Control of Asthma.”)  trained mothers to manage their children’s Asthma. This culturally based research initiative has improved the health of the children being studied and increased the University of Puerto Rico’s capacity to perform more research into the causes of health disparities. As a result of CALMA, visits to the hospital emergency room for asthma decreased by 37%, hospitalizations fell by 68%, and caregivers were twice as likely to feel helpless when dealing with their child’s asthma symptoms.

The CALMA project mentored and supported 19 young investigators who produced 113 publications of their work - book chapters, articles in peer reviewed journals, and reviews.

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Collaboration with NIEHS 

Dale P. Sandler, Ph.D., NIEHS

Dale P. Sandler, Ph.D., chief Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reported on the very successful collaboration between NIEHS and NCMHD on the Sister Study, a unique public private partnership that seeks to identify some of the genetic and environmental causes of breast cancer.

Begun in 2003, the study will follow 50,000 US and Puerto Rican women ages 35 to 74 whose sisters had breast cancer.

NCMHD has been a consistent supporter of the project. In FY 2007 NCMHD awarded $2.1 million to the study to assist in the recruitment and retention of a diverse cohort of women - African Americans, Asians, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Hispanics, and Seniors age 65 and older.

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