Saturday, April 17, 2010



How To Solve and Eliminate Health Disparities

On March 31st, 2010, I had the pleasure to give a presentation to the Multicultural Student Nursing Association at East Carolina University. I was invited by the student President -- Jessica Bland and the nursing faculty.


The title of the presentation was, "How to Solve and and Eliminate Health Disparities." Throughout my talk, I highlighted the conference major themes which were:

  • How health disparities affects health care delivery.


  • What does health disparities mean to health care providers?


  • How we as health care providers better serve health disparities populations in eastern North Carolina

Interesting, I had a number of excellent questions from nursing students and faculty who were passionate about health disparities and truly wanted to find new ways in which nursing professionals can be one of the key health care providers to help solve and eliminate health disparities. As I reinterated throughout my talk, nurses have always and continue to be the key health care providers to eliminating health disparities.

I also mentioned to the audience that one of my key mentors who provided me guidance, encouragement and direction throughout my doctoral training at Wayne State University (1983-1988) was the Founder of Transcultural Nursing -- Dr. Madeleine Leininger. I was fortunate to sit in on several of her classes while going through by doctoral program in Anthropolology at WSU. She was also one of my doctoral advisors and I owe much of my perspective about health and medical care to her.


Here is a picture of Multicultual Nursing Student President Jessica Bland and myself.