Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine has received a three-year, $4.3 million federal grant to address healthcare disparities in preventative medicine.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offered the grant to establish a research center that will work to reduce the current racial inequities in the distribution of healthcare resources and facilities.
“The long-term goal is to be able to continue this expansion and be able to address a much broader array of clinical preventive services,” said David Baker, the center’s director. “This is action-oriented research – we’re interested in finding solutions and making sure those solutions are adopted around the country.”
Feinberg’s center is one of three programs being implemented across the United States to improve preventative medicine. Grants were also given to the medical schools at University of North Carolina and the University of Colorado to address other aspects of preventative medicine, such as improving patient safety.
Baker said the three centers will work together to share ideas and are “designed to be synergistic and complimentary.”
While Baker said the Feinberg center’s studies will focus on racial disparities, he added discrepancies in healthcare accessibility can also be based on other social factors.
“I think it’s an issue for everyone to one degree or another,” the Feinberg professor said. “There are gaps by gender, there are gaps by rural areas, and there are gaps for the elderly. Everybody may have different problems with under-using clinical preventive services.”
The center will begin its research early next year with three projects: finding methods to increase colon and rectal cancer screening, utilizing electronic records to identify people at high risk for cardiovascular disease and exploring why blacks are less likely to accept medicine treating pneumonia.
Allison Rosen, the site coordinator for LIFT-Evanston – an organization that employs NU student volunteers to help low-income families and individuals – said it is often difficult to find preventative healthcare services for their clients.
“There’s just not a lot out there in the Evanston community,” Rosen said. “So this is really exciting that there’s research being done towards preventative services.”
Pre-med student Shruti Zaveri said preventative medicine is a cost-effective way to approach medicine.
“It’s better to prevent illness than to try and cure it later on,” the Weinberg junior said. “If you can diagnose illnesses in advance, it’s a lot better for the patient.”
Zaveri added she thinks healthcare disparities are based on one’s socioeconomic status rather than race.
“People from a lower socio-economical standpoint do not have the same access to medical care as others,” she said. “It becomes a topic of inequality versus inequity. People who are unequal also get unequal services, which isn’t always the best for society.”
In order to improve its research, Baker said he hopes the center will collaborate with other NU academic departments, such as anthropology, sociology, communication and social policy.
“As we expand out, we really hope to expand the team that we have.”
