UB Awarded $3.6 Million NIH Grant to Address Western New York Health Inequities

By Ellen Goldbaum

Both UB’s strong community partnerships and the university’s range and breadth of expertise were instrumental in getting the award, university leaders said.

The five-year grant from the institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, aims to inspire and mentor early-career faculty researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines to address the entire range of social determinants of health. This includes poverty, substandard housing, unequal access to health care, lack of educational opportunity, racism and more.

UB will use the award to establish the Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement, which will be embedded in the university-wide Community Health Equity Research Institute. The center will encourage and support research that benefits people who experience health inequities caused by adverse social determinants of health.

“Today’s $3.6 million grant will help ensure all Western New Yorkers have access to the quality health care they need and deserve, no matter their means or background,” U.S. Rep. Timothy M. Kennedy said. “It will provide UB with the resources it needs to recruit and develop the next generation of researchers to better understand the social disparities that impact the health care and services people rely on in order to level the playing field. This is just another example of the ways Western New York is becoming a better and more equitable place to live, work, and raise a family — for everyone.”

Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said ”This award underscores UB’s unwavering dedication to enhancing the health of the Buffalo community. Leveraging UB’s robust expertise in health sciences and our extensive research capabilities, we are fully committed to advancing health outcomes.”

She added: ”Through our strong partnerships with numerous community organizations, we believe we can transform the health landscape of our region. Although this award is centered at UB, its true purpose is to empower and transform the health of Buffalo and Western New York.”

The grant, titled “Igniting Hope in Buffalo, New York Communities: Training the Next Generation of Health Equity Researchers,” provides UB with resources to attract early-career faculty researchers and postdoctoral fellows from health care disciplines, as well as non-health care fields, to work on problems that impact the social determinants of health. The center will utilize a “community-based participatory research” approach, where community members are a partner in the research, helping to design, plan and conduct the research so that they can gain the greatest benefit from it.

While advances in medical interventions have dramatically accelerated in recent years, such interventions cannot overcome the systemic inequities that are so deeply rooted in complex social systems. For that reason, the center will prioritize attracting investigators working in fields outside of health care to address, for example, inequities in the criminal justice system, substandard housing, access to healthy food and many other issues.

“Adverse health outcomes are a result of these social determinants of health” said Timothy F. Murphy, MD, principal investigator on the grant, SUNY Distinguished Professor of medicine and director of UB’s Community Health Equity Research Institute. “If we could solve all health care access problems, we’ll still only change health outcomes in our at-risk communities by about 15%. 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.”

“Health inequity remains a serious and complicated issue in Buffalo and its surrounding communities,” said state Sen. Sean M. Ryan. “To solve this crisis, we must understand its root causes and develop innovative solutions. I am pleased to support the University at Buffalo and community leaders who are addressing this urgent problem, and look forward to building stronger and healthier communities in Western New York.”

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

In a reflection of those connections, Rev. George F. Nicholas, CEO of the Buffalo Center for Health Equity is associate director of the UB Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement. He said that without research, many well-intentioned efforts don’t have the expected benefit.

“The work of health equity has got to be data-driven,” he said. “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. Research gives us a clear picture on the depth of the problems and what is driving them. When we better understand the scope of the problems and what’s driving them, then we can develop approaches and remedies to solve them.”

With the grant, UB will provide faculty researchers and postdoctoral fellows with pilot funding for projects with community partners that have the potential to generate transformational change. These changes will not be quick fixes, Murphy cautioned.

“A Black person in Buffalo dies 10 to 12 years younger than a white person in Buffalo,” Murphy said. “That’s a tragedy and unfortunately it’s not one that’s going to change anytime soon. But what if 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. 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.”

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.’”