To optimize health and wellness in Alabama and beyond, it is imperative that we facilitate research focused on the prevention, screening, and treatment of disease. This includes accounting for contextual factors encountered by individuals and populations across the lifecourse, and relative to their healthcare needs, preferences, values, and beliefs. From precision medicine to population health, UAB investigators are conducting research to understand how an individual’s background, physical environments, social environments, healthcare systems, and societal structures impact healthcare access, options, and outcomes. We are partnering with people, communities, and organizations to access and analyze biological, clinical, behavioral, social, and economic data and apply technological, methodological, and analytic innovations to catalyze discoveries from the bench to the community. The dissemination of these discoveries informs practice and policy ensuring the opportunity for every individual to achieve their highest level of health.
A Lifecourse Approach considers the cumulative impact of circumstances, events, and experiences across different stages of one’s life. While our unique genetic makeup shapes everything from our height and eye color to our risk of experiencing diseases like sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and cancer, a host of factors over the lifetime influence our health. Precision Population Health uses data-driven approaches to incorporate individual genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors for tailored population-level prevention, screening, and treatment of disease. HEAL: A Precision Population Approach is particularly salient in Alabama, where rural hospital closures and limited availability of primary, maternal, and mental healthcare impose formidable challenges to health and healthcare delivery for populations with a high burden of disease. It is imperative that we move beyond describing differences in rates and severity of disease to understanding their underlying drivers and mechanisms and implementing multilevel interventions so that everyone can achieve their full health potential.
The following programs, projects, and partnerships are examples of how we are accomplishing this research focus area’s mission:
- Live HealthSmart Alabama, the winning project selected for the inaugural UAB Grand Challenge. Its goal is to make Alabama a model of healthy living by lifting our state out of the bottom 10 in national health rankings by the year 2030.
- UAB Minority Health & Health Equity Research Center (MHERC) is generating and disseminating research knowledge from biomedical, behavioral, and social sciences to reduce the health disparities experienced by vulnerable populations and disadvantaged communities locally, regionally, and nationally.
- Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship (ICOS), founded in 2015, is reducing the burden of cancer and its long-term effects across all segments of the population, through interdisciplinary research, health promotion, and education, envisioning a world where cancer survivors live long and healthy lives.
- Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research supports the training and conduct of rigorous person-centered outcomes research, spanning the health system, community, and population health settings by offering training and enrichment programs, and facilitating networking and collaboration.
- Mary Heersink Institute for Global Health’s goal is to improve overall health and functional well-being and promote equity in health outcomes among people around the world. It will present a coordinated, comprehensive, and sustainable infrastructure to mitigate the most pressing and complex global health challenges.
- Center for Women’s Reproductive Health is one of UAB’s signature endeavors with the mission to conduct research aimed at improving the reproductive health and survival of all women, especially minority and under-served women and their families.
- Center for AIDS Research supports cutting-edge HIV basic, clinical, and behavioral research by offering services and expertise to any researcher interested in HIV or related areas.
- Center for Engagement in Disability Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is part of the UAB-Lakeshore Foundation Research Collaborative and carries the distinction of being a member of the UAB University-Wide Interdisciplinary Research Centers (UWIRC) program. The mission of this program is to accelerate and implement scientific discoveries, technological advances, behavioral practices, and social norms that will allow people with disabilities to increase their overall quality of life.
Task Force Members
Michael Mugavero, M.D. - Lead, Department of Medicine Medicine/ID
Alan Tita, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D - Department of OB/GYN
Andrea Cherrington, M.D. - Department of Medicine/DOPM
Bertha Hidalgo, Ph.D - School of Public Health
Gabriella Oates, Ph.D - Department of Pediatrics
Mona Fouad, M.D., M.P.H. - Department of Medicine/DOPM
Sarah MacCathy, Sc.D - School of Public Health
Larrell L Wilkinson, Ph.D, C.H.E.S. - School of Education and Human Sciences
Shyla K. Fields, M.B.A.- Department of Medicine/Deans Office
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