BUFFALO, N.Y. — A first-of-its-kind health equity conference held at the University at Buffalo in conjunction with the University of Rochester kicks off Friday. The goal is to lay the groundwork to bridge the gap in healthcare between the two cities. More than 200 people will be at UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center for the daylong conversation.
“We know all of the many cuts that are coming and are just going to exacerbate problems that were really highlighted during COVID and continue to really need attention,” said Heather Gardiner, professor and Carl V. Granger Endowed Chair in Health Equity in the Department of Family Medicine at UB.
With major changes to healthcare coverage coming next year, the hope is to stop health inequities from getting larger. For the past year, teams from UB and UR have been working together to make this conference – and the conversations – a reality.
“We are anticipating a lot of cuts from our people on Medicare, Medicaid,” Gardiner said. “So access to healthcare within a region that is largely rural and already has problems with accessing healthcare, it’s really going to be a problem.”
A number of the participants are being bused in from Rochester, highlighting the importance of “community-engaged approaches and cross-sector partnerships.”
“What we learned at our institution [is] that folks can be right across the street and not be aware of what their colleagues are working on or where there might be synergy for us to work together,” Edith Williams, director of the Center for Community Health and Prevention and our Office of Health Equity Research at the University of Rochester Medicine, said. “Then we’ll be able to build better and more responsive programs, interventions, even informing policy. Even in the midst of the complex health inequities that we’re facing, we know that to truly make progress, we need to be coming together. We need to be collaborating.”
This year, the focus is on rural health, mobile health and maternal health. Besides finding the best solutions to move forward, Gardiner is hoping some in attendance will take advantage of grant opportunities in the New Year.
“The Community Health Equity Research Institute was awarded a large grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities,” Gardiner said. “It’s called the P-50 Center for Excellence and allows us to award pilot money to early career investigators. So my hope is that some of the folks that are presenting will also apply for that funding when the next round comes.”
Source: spectrumlocalnews.com
