FORT WORTH, Texas – The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth is hosting "Developing a Latino Health Agenda for 2010: Call for Action," July 22-24 on the center’s Cultural District campus.

Dr. Hector Balcazar, who recently joined the health science center as a professor in the School of Public Health, was awarded a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for this two-day conference.

"This conference is a unique opportunity to promote, in an integrated manner, solutions to the disparities of health care for our Latino communities," says Dr. Balcazar. "I believe our universities need to be important partners with many different constituencies to help create the vision for Latinos that contributes to eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in public health."

The purpose of this conference is to formulate a comprehensive research and policy agenda for Latino health issues that will serve as the basis for a unified Latino health approach.

Several leading Latino experts from across the country are attending the conference, including representatives from UCLA School of Medicine, Arizona State University, University of Maryland, Midwest Center for Latino Research at the University of Illinois and the Medical Effectiveness Research Center at the University of San Francisco.

Also invited are representatives from the National Council of La Raza, which is the largest Hispanic organization in the country, the National Hispanic Medical Association, and federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Health Resources and Services Administration and other Latino Health Research Institutes from different parts of the country.

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