Health Equity Takes a Village

While medical interventions have advanced dramatically in recent years—from breakthrough drugs to gene therapies and more—these improvements alone can’t overcome the systemic health inequities rooted in social systems.

That’s why UB is dedicating a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to supporting research that benefits people who experience adverse outcomes caused by social factors such as poverty, substandard housing, unequal access to health care, lack of educational opportunity, racism and more.

UB will use the five-year grant to establish the Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement. Embedded in the university’s existing Community Health Equity Research Institute, the center will support research that benefits people who experience health inequities caused by social determinants of health.

“A Black person in Buffalo dies 10 to 12 years younger than a white person in Buffalo,” said Timothy Murphy, SUNY Distinguished Professor and director of the university’s Community Health Equity Research Institute, noting that there’s not a quick or simple fix for such a tragic disparity.

“Let’s say a researcher develops a green infrastructure project that actually reduces pollution in a neighborhood and that then causes a drop in the number of kids with asthma who end up in the emergency room,” he said. “That’s going to have a bigger outcome down the road; kids won’t be missing school, their education improves. That’s the kind of change we’re going to see with this new research.”

In 2019, UB established the Community Health Equity Research Institute with strong community involvement. In 2021, Erie County established its Office of Health Equity. That same year, UB’s Center for Urban Studies partnered with the Community Health Equity Research Institute, linking the institute to urban planning and neighborhood development.

These connections have cemented local, coordinated university-community-government efforts to address health inequities, some of which may depend on legislative and policy changes.

However, as noted by Rev. George F. Nicholas, CEO of the Buffalo Center for Health Equity and associate director of the new grant-funded center, many well-intentioned efforts don’t have the expected benefit if not supported by research.

“A lot of work that is done to address social problems often gets tied up in theoretical approaches or philosophical approaches, and history has taught us while they may do some good, they don’t bring real change,” he said. “Research gives us a clear picture on the depth of the problems and what is driving them.”

The center aims to include investigators working in fields outside of health care to address, for example, inequities in the criminal justice system, substandard housing and access to healthy food.

“What we are trying to do with this grant is to attract researchers in non-health care disciplines who are working in urban planning or education or law or management and to make them aware that their work is absolutely critical to solving health disparities in Western New York,” said Murphy.

The center could even change how research is viewed in the community, Nicholas added, and it will encourage people in at-risk communities to get involved.

“You don’t hear a lot of young people say, ‘Hey, I want to be a researcher,’” he said. “But we want to make being a researcher not only a possibility but make it attainable and desirable, to say ‘This is something you could do that will have an impact on your community, on the neighborhood you live in.’”