Sunday, December 21, 2008




POSTER PRESENTATION AT NIH SUMMIT: THE SCIENCE OF ELIMINATING HEALTH DISPARITIES











Greetings Everyone,






During this past week, I participated in the NIH Summit: The Science of Eliminating Health Disparities with a poster presentation highlighting my new online graduate course at East Carolina University -- "Ethnic Health & Health Disparities." The title of my presentation was:



You can download my poster presentation from the link above!



This new online graduate course uses the latest technology to assist health professionals and public health administrators in solving health issues in eastern North Carolina and the United States. Students used the university's Blackboard software to not only hear and view my audio podcast and webcam lectures but they also responded to the discussion board and chatroom sessions online. In addition, culturally competent reports from the National Institutes of Health were also placed online for specific diseased-focused ethnic health and health disparity issues.



The success of this new online course has not only enabled health professionals and public health administrators to acquire new public health skill sets that will assist them in working with and developing culturally competent health programs but it also helped to create a new online 12-credit graduate certificate program in Ethnic Health and Health Disparities at East Carolina University.

Finally, this NIH conference was sponsored and organized by the National Center on Minority Health & Health Disparities (NCMHD). Interestingly, I worked at NCMHD as a Health Scientist Administrator from 2001-2004 and completely enjoyed the opportunity to work with this NIH federal health agency when it first started. In fact, I met several of my former colleagues at the Summit including the Director Dr. John Ruffin. It was a great reunion and they made me feel as though as I was still apart of NCMHD.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008



Presentation at Harvard University!








Greetings Everyone,

This past weekend, I had the pleasure to be a panelist in one of the sessions of an excellent conference entitled, "The Fourth Annual Kennedy School of Government Black Policy Conference" at Harvard University. I joined two other esteemed panelists in the session called "Campaign to Improve our Health: African Americans and Obesity."


Each panelist spent approximately 10 -15 minutes presenting their research and later we took questions from the audience. During my presentation, I highlighted the major issues related to my 2006 book -- "Food Choice and Obesity in Black America: Creating a New Cultural Diet." I primarily emphasized how culture greatly influences our food choices and that we need to continue developing culturally competent programs such as my New Black Cultural Diet (http://www.newblackculturaldiet/.)




The other panelists included Dr. Shiriki Kumanyika and Dr. Ian Smith. The audience asked a number of excellent questions and it looked like we had a lively interaction during question and answer time.

I have included a photo of the panelists along with our moderator, Dr. C. Frank Igwe and Mr. Sam Sanders - organizer of this panel session and a photo of one of the buildings in the JFK School of Government complex where we presented our session.

All in all, this was the best conference that I was ever apart of. The scholarly environment of Harvard University along with the scholarly professionals who organized this conference made this a ONE OF A KIND CONFERENCE THAT APPRECIATED AND CELEBRATED DIVERSITY!!

Friday, February 08, 2008

Greetings Everyone,


Yesterday, I presented my talk on "Food Choice & Obesity in Black America: Creating a New Cultural Diet" at a community health event in eastern North Carolina. The event was titled, "Working For Healthy Communities," and I was one of the 5 speakers to talk about health and medical issues related to diabetes in the African American community. This event occurred at the Zion Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Pollocksville, North Carolina.

I had alot of fun meeting community members at this event and listenting to the other guest speakers. The church and community made everyone feel very welcome and at home.

In my particular talk, I emphasized how our African American cultural eating traditions and cultural health patterns must be understood and respected while also finding culturally competent strategies to modify these long standing traditions. I believe the community members enjoyed the talk and of course I loved presenting it in a much more "lively" way for the community!

In addition to the presentation, two of my former ECU graduate students and now public health professionals who took my classes were the organizers of this event for Jones County Health Department. Here is our picture along with others of the event.