UAB Health Disparities Research Symposium

Addressing Health Disparities through Policy, Systems, and Environmental Changes
Thursday, April 18, 2019                                                        

UAB Health Disparities Research Symposium highlights the work of undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and community investigators in basic science, clinical, behavioral, social sciences research and community-based research related to health disparities.  The 14th annual UAB Health Disparities Research Symposium will be held Thursday, April 18, 2019 at the Hilton Birmingham at UAB. 

The keynote speaker will be Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH, the George A. Weiss University Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Nursing, Director of the UPenn Prevention Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also Associate Director for Community Engaged Research and Program Leader for Cancer Control, at the Abramon Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

A globally influential public health scholar whose work spans psychology, epidemiology, nutrition, and other disciplines, her research in community and healthcare settings focuses on obesity, nutrition, and the built environment; reducing health disparities; and health communication technologies. Her research, funded for over $40 million over the past 25 years, focuses on cancer prevention and control, theories of health behavior, obesity and the built environment, implementation science, social and health policy, and new health communication technologies.
Dr. Glanz's research and publications about understanding, measuring, and improving healthy food environments, beginning in the late 1980's have been widely recognized and replicated.

She is a member of the NHLBI Advisory Council and served on the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services for ten years. Dr. Glanz was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. She was designated a Highly Cited Author by ISIHighlyCited.com, in the top 0.5 percent of authors in her field and designated as one of The World's Most Influential Minds 2015 by Thomson Reuters.

Jonathan Engel, PhD, MBA will be the plenary speaker. A Professor of Public Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College (CUNY), Dr. Engel conducts research in the historical evolution of U.S. health and social welfare policy. He has also taught at Seton Hall University, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts.

Dr. Engel's books are Doctors and Reformers: Discussion and Debate on Health Policy, 1925-1950 (University of South Carolina Press, 2002); Poor People's Medicine: Medicaid and U.S. Charity Care Since 1965, (Duke University Press, 2006); American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States, (Gotham Books of Penguin/Putnam, 2008); Unaffordable: American Healthcare From Johnson to Trump (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). In his latest book, Fat Nation: Obesity in America since 1945 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Dr. Engel attempts to show that obesity is a symptom of complex changes that have transpired since WWII to our food, our living habits, our life patterns, our built environment, and our social interactions. 
 
Additional symposium highlights of the annual event include the oral presentations and poster sessions featuring original research by academic investigators, scholars, and community partners in the fields of basic science, clinical research, social and behavioral science, and community-based research.

The 2019 symposium is produced by the UAB Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center (MHRC) and co-sponsored by two national centers for health disparities research: UAB Obesity Health Disparities Research Center, led by Mona Fouad, MD, MPH, Director and Professor, Division of Preventive Medicine and Director of the UAB MHRC and the Gulf States Health Policy Center, led by Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, Founder and CEO of BayouClinic and 18th U.S. Surgeon General.

Symposium Program with Abstracts
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Symposium Program with Abstracts
Call for Abstracts
Agenda

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