Tuskegee University (TU), the applicant institution, proposes to establish a program to reduce minority health disparities by initiating a Center of Excellence in Public Health and Bioethics. Our partner in this effort will be the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, the collaborating institution. The overarching goal of the Tuskegee Center of Excellence is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a strategy which combines the methods of public health and bioethics in programs of research, education and outreach to reduce disparities in disease and disabilities in the Black Belt region of Alabama. The ultimate aim is to eliminate the disproportionate burden of disease and disability borne by these populations. A secondary goal is to augment the human and infrastructural resources that support and give traction to this strategy over the long haul. The requirements of achieving this goal include, et. al., building institutional capacity for long term work on the tasks of reducing health disparities in Alabama's Black Belt counties. These tasks will be articulated and engaged through the establishment of a coordinated program of work between Tuskegee and the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa via the new Center of Excellence in Public Health and Bioethics. The inhabitants of the Black Belt counties of Alabama are medically underserved, disproportionately sick, poor, low-income, and uneducated. Consequently, they have limited knowledge of healthy lifestyles, disease, prevention, and limited access to health systems. These conditions must be addressed at the points and in the ways by which they can be most effectively transformed. That is our goal. Through these activities, all informed by a unique and serious emphasis on bioethics that flows through research, health care, education and training, community outreach and education, Tuskegee University and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa will expand, strengthen and better integrate and focus our infrastructure and programs in public health and bioethics, biomedicine, bioscience and behavioral and social science research in ways that wilt maximize their impact on ameliorating the five disparity disease areas of diabetes, cardiovascular, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and infant mortality.
