The Education &Training Core (ETC) of the ARCHD, co-directed by Katharine E. Stewart and Kevin W. Ryan, builds upon the substantial success of our innovative partnerships with the three Historically Black Colleges &Universities (HBCUs) in Arkansas to increase awareness of the fields of public health and disparities research among HBCU students, develop combined BA/MPH and BS/MPH (""""""""4+1"""""""") degree programs that identify talented HBCU undergraduates and facilitate their early entry into graduate study in public health, provide students with crucial research skills, and support mentoring relationships for these students with ARCHD faculty. It also builds upon the successes of the COPH in developing several courses focused on racial disparities, social determinants of health, and community-based public health (CBPH), and in identifying, recruiting, and mentoring African-American graduate students and faculty. Working from these strengths, the ETC's overarching goal during the proposed funding period will be to establish a sustainable infrastructure to support outreach to and development of talented minority scholars at the undergraduate, graduate, post-doctoral, and faculty levels, including increased exposure to coursework in health disparities and CBPH, mentored research experience in these areas, and training in research skills and responsible conduct of research. The Sullivan Commission and Institute of Medicine, among others, have persuasively argued that increasing the representation of under-represented minority (URM) students and faculty in the health professions is a crucial aspect of addressing health disparities (Sullivan Commission, 2004;lOM, 2004), yet African-American scholars remain under-represented at all levels of higher education in public health. This disparity increases from undergraduate degrees through graduate education and into the faculty ranks, so that African-Americans represent only 5% of doctoral-level graduates from public health degree programs (Mitchell &Lassiter, 2006) and only 3% of tenured faculty in accredited schools of public health (ASPH, 2009). However, programs that provide structured support for students and faculty, including involvement of students in research, provision of academic support to students and professional development to faculty, and training in strong instructional strategies, have significantly improved students'enrollment in and completion of graduate degree programs in scientific fields (Clewell, de Cohen, &Tsui, 2010). Thus, the ARCHD ETC proposes a multi-level model of support and professional development for minority scholars in health disparities.
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