TB Notes Newsletter
This is an archived document. The links
and content are no longer being updated.
No. 4, 2006
CDC/ATSDR Group Award for Minority
Health Mentor/Champion of Excellence
On July 13, 2006, Gail Burns-Grant and
Michael Fraser of DTBE’s Field Services and Evaluation Branch
received the Minority Health Mentor/Champion of Excellence Group
Award at the CDC/ATSDR Honor Awards Ceremony. This award was
given in recognition of their work to reduce TB in African
Americans through the coordination of three highly successful
demonstration projects in the states of Georgia and South
Carolina and the city of Chicago and for the timely
dissemination of lessons learned from these projects.
The work of the staff in the three project
areas that Gail and Michael coordinated was critical to the
success of the demonstration projects. These project area staff
worked successfully with community-based organizations and local
health departments in targeting interventions to specific
community areas, including zip code areas and health districts.
Early on, the project staff recognized that it would be
important to have community involvement and worked to ensure
community representation and inclusion in the planning and
implementation of these three projects. Efforts were made to
develop active partnerships with the targeted populations to
ensure their needs were met and that the interventions developed
were culturally competent and acceptable.
Gail and Michael disseminate the key findings
from the project areas in a quarterly CDC/DTBE publication,
The TB Challenge. This newsletter, approaching its third
year, is formatted, edited, designed, and distributed by DTBE
staff. Through this newsletter, project staff share strategies,
innovative approaches, interventions, and evaluation results
that can be translated and applied nationally. Gail and Michael
also share project experiences and outcomes at local and
national conferences, meetings, and seminars sponsored by
internal and external partners, in order to raise awareness and
initiate actions that will address the disparity of TB in the
African-American community. Working
closely with project areas engaged in this work, Gail and
Michael have made contributions that have had a positive public
health impact and that will help improve the health of African
Americans nationwide. Gail commented on the award as follows:
“We share this award with all of our partners who are committed
and dedicated to addressing the historically high rates of TB in
the African-American community, for we work with them and
through them to advance this work. I am particularly grateful
for the latitude we have had—the flexibility that our project
areas have been granted by our division to develop, design, and
disseminate acceptable messages that were actually created in
the community for the community.”
—Submitted by Dave Crowder
Div of TB Elimination |