Sonja Harris-Haywood, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Haywood’s health disparities research is made possible in large part to grants she received from the NCMHD Loan Repayment Program.

Her primary research interest is in understanding cultural competency – developing a relevant definition as well as practice models that take advantage of that definition. Haywood said, “While this (cultural competency) concept is widely accepted as a mechanism for improving outcomes for culturally-diverse populations but how we define it, measure its presence, and test its association with health outcomes in a primary care setting is still uncertain.”