Grant Targets S.C. Health Disparities

A recently announced $6.7 million grant will help South Carolina public health experts build on an effort to reduce diseases that disproportionately affect minority populations, including HIV/AIDS, human papillomavirus, and various cancers.

In 2005, the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health received a $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study and reduce health disparities among African Americans. Among the grant's chief achievements have been the establishment of a virus research lab at historically black Claflin University-Orangeburg and the founding of community-based prevention, screening and treatment programs.

"We've built a level of trust, and now the community has a sense of hope in dealing with these disparities," said Saundra Glover, an associate dean at the Arnold School.

Grant-supported community advisory groups have focused much of their effort on HIV/AIDS. Local volunteers on the advisory groups help health officials understand the best ways to disseminate information. One of the most effective means of communication has been when those advisory group members, not health officials, translate the science of HIV/AIDS to communities.

Twelve women living with HIV/AIDS have been trained to discuss issues surrounding the disease with community groups, and in turn have become the trainers of others, said Shirley James, executive director of the Minority AIDS Council in Orangeburg County. The new funding should allow for an expansion of this advisory program.

The Claflin laboratory, which opened in 2,700 square feet of converted classroom space in 2007, has recently been expanded to 14,000 square feet. The lab's sophisticated equipment allows the school to tackle research usually done only at larger schools. And it has become a tool for luring potential researchers from under-represented minority groups, providing more than 100 research internships in the past three years.

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.


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