Eliminating Minority Health Disparities in the SF Bay Area, California Abstract: This grant application requests two-year support for Annual SFSU Human Rights Summits sponsored and coordinated by the Global Peace, Human Rights and Justice Studies Program, the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, the Health Equity Institute, and the Center for Health Disparities Research and Training at San Francisco State University. SFSU is a minority-serving institution (MSI) committed to promoting equity and social justice for both campus and external constituencies through the diversity of its students and employees. The 7th Annual SFSU Human Rights Summit will be held on May 15-17, 2010, at the Cesar Chavez Student Center at SFSU, CA, a handicapped accessible facility. The conference theme is Health and Education Equity. The overall goal of each of the Summits is to provide a forum for discussion about the various challenges, solutions, and opportunities to prevent and eliminate health disparities in poor underserved neighborhoods and in ethnic minorities from a human rights perspective. When basic human rights are protected, health equity naturally ensues. The San Francisco Bay Area in California, inhabited by 7.4 million people, is a minority-majority area, as non-Hispanic whites comprise less than half of its population. Ethnic minority groups in the SF Bay Area, following a national trend, suffer disproportionately from a number of preventable diseases and health problems, including mental illness, diabetes, asthma, and cancer. Participants will discuss best practices in social and behavioral research, encourage and solidify local networking connections, and examine community-based participatory research methods for collaboration among researchers, health professionals, community leaders, and human rights advocates. The annual SFSU human rights summits have consistently drawn a large, diverse, and dynamic group of participants--last year's 6th annual summit on Health Equity was attended by more than 2000 people including graduate and undergraduate students, and faculty at SFSU, UCSF, UCB, USF, Stanford, and local community colleges, as well as advocates, health professionals, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders from all over the country. The social and cultural aspects of inequality have emerged throughout the initial six summits as key determinants of ill health. The prevention and elimination of structural, interpersonal, and symbolic barriers to health equity are thus necessary for the achievement of optimal health in all communities, including those that are socially disadvantaged. Recourse to the performing arts, including theater, dance, and spoken word is a unique feature of the summits, creating a forum for the cross-fertilization of interdisciplinary ideas that fill the gap in minority disparities research. We build each year upon the prior year's conference. All of the tools we develop-books, videos, brochures, websites, theater performances--are open source and publically available, including all materials from the summit.
As human rights education becomes more integrated into public health, it is vital that all stakeholders have a forum to convene and share ideas in an open space. The proposed range of annual workshops and panels, will provide this vital link, and is likely to lead to improved health outcomes as a result of the trans-disciplinary community-based research collaborations and/or outreach activities that are fomented by the summit. Principal Investigator: Ferreira, Mariana Leal
As human rights education becomes more integrated into public health, it is vital that all stakeholders have a forum to convene and share ideas in an open space. The proposed range of speakers, workshops, panels, and multimedia performances at SFSU will provide this vital link. The conference is likely to engage minority participants in research and community-oriented projects designed to produce health equity, as a result of the trans-disciplinary collaborations and outreach activities fomented by the summit.
