Watch Live Here: Minority Health Conference From University Of North Carolina

 Building community is theme for UNC's Minority Health Conference

The 31st annual Minority Health Conference, titled "Building Community
in the Age of Information: Fighting Health Inequality in the Modern
World," will take place Friday (Feb. 26) at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The event, hosted by Minority Student Caucus at the UNC Gillings School
of Global Public Health, will be held at the William and Ida Friday
Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill.

Columbia University's Robert E. Fullilove, Ed.D., will present the 12th
Annual William T. Small Jr. Keynote Lecture. His talk, "Community
Organizing and Community Building: Public Health Watchwords for the 21st
Century," draws on his experiences as a community organizer with the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. "Much of what I
have done in public health comes straight from that experience," he
said. 

Fullilove is associate dean for community and minority affairs,
professor of clinical sociomedical sciences and co-director of the
community research group at the Columbia University Mailman School of
Public Health. He also co-directs a new degree program in urbanism and
community health in Columbia's department of sociomedical sciences. He
also has served on Institute of Medicine study committees that produced
reports on substance abuse and addiction, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and
damp indoor spaces and health. 

The lecture will be available as a free webcast at 2 p.m. that
afternoon, followed by a live question-and-answer session.

The conference also features presentations, a poster exhibition and
several interactive sessions. Topics include CeaseFire
(www.ceasefirechicago.org), an evidence-based public health approach to
reducing gun violence in Chicago; using "telemedicine," or
telecommunications technology, to address the health needs of rural and
underserved communities; and a health literacy workshop. 

"The conference's focus this year on building community in a networked
world could not be more timely," said Barbara K. Rimer, Dr.P.H., dean
and Alumni Distinguished Professor at the Gillings School of Global
Public Health. 

Rimer said attendees "will learn new information, think about
challenging issues in new ways and be awed by the talent of our
students."

The conference, started by the UNC Minority Student Caucus in 1977, is
the nation's oldest and largest student-run conference. The program was
developed to highlight health issues of concern to people of color and
to attract students interested in minority concerns to public health.
Aprajita Anand and Emily Brostek, master's students in the department of
health behavior and health education, are co-chairs of this year's
event. 

"In the current financial crisis, minorities have been
disproportionately affected," Anand said. "Now more than ever, the
Minority Health Conference is a very relevant piece of the puzzle in
terms of what's happening in this country, and we think people will get
a lot out of attending this year's conference." 

Sponsors include the Gillings School of Global Public Health Dean's
Office, the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, the UNC
Graduate and Professional Student Federation, and the Office of the
Chancellor. Other sponsors are listed online. 


For more information about the conference and the webcast, visit
http://studentorgs.unc.edu/msc/.

Minority Health Conference contacts: Aprajita Anand,
aprajita.anand@gmail.com, or Emily Brostek, ebrostek@gmail.com. 
Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, (919)
966-7467, or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.
News Services contact: Patric Lane, (919) 962-8596, patric_lane@unc.edu