(Feature from the NAU Review by Heidi Toth)
A groundbreaking research collaborative at Northern Arizona University received another $21 million grant to continue its work to promote health equity and study health disparities among diverse populations of the American Southwest.
The Center for Community Health and Engaged Research (CHER) received a $21 million, five-year grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC). It was initially funded in 2017 with a grant of the same size, at the time one of the largest grants in NAU’s history. This work is critical to Native nations as well as the missions of both NAU and NIH.
“SHERC’s overall goal is to increase basic biomedical, clinical and behavioral research, and research opportunities, for underrepresented and underserved communities in this region and increase access to resources for these groups, particularly the Native nations that have lived in the Southwest for centuries,” said Julie Baldwin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Regents’ professor in the Department of Health Science, director of the Center for Community Health and Engaged Research and SHERC’s principal investigator. “This grant will allow us to build on its unprecedented success of the first five years, as well as to increase engagement of underrepresented faculty in leadership, increase the success of our early-stage investigators and contribute to improving health equity and outcomes for the people of this region.”