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$6 million grant establishes Center for African-American Urban Health at WSU

The Detroit metropolitan area is the most segregated in the nation, but $6 million in funding may help address disparities between whites and African Americans in this community. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has established Wayne State University as one of eight centers in the United States to study population health and health disparities

Led by John Flack, M.D., MPH, WSU's newly established Center for African-American Urban Health will seek new ways to redress health disparities by identifying preventive strategies and therapeutic approaches to chronic diseases that plague this population, namely obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Dr. Flack will act as the principal investigator and enlist the commitment of 34 investigators from five care areas of expertise. Together, they will work on four specific projects that focus on precursors and factors mediating chronic conditions in African Americans. These projects are:

• Obesity, Nitric Oxide, Oxidative Stress and Salt Sensitivity
• Weight Loss in Breast Cancer Survivors, and
• A Dyadic Intervention for Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients

Dr. Flack, who has published extensively on African Americans' salt sensitivity and predisposition to hypertension, understands the unique health needs of the population to which he refers and belongs. As a professor of internal medicine and community medicine, he sees the immediate link between a person's individualized health concerns and those they are automatically subjected to by virtue of their geographic location, gender, age, race or ethnicity.

The NIEHS says the eight national centers will receive a total $60.5 million over the next five years to support transdisciplinary research to examine how the social and physical environment, behavioral factors, and biologic pathways interact to determine health and disease in populations.

"African Americans comprise one of the largest minority groups in the United States, and they suffer excessively from a wide range of obesity and lifestyle-related health conditions," Dr. Flack said. "We hope to alleviate the disproportionate burden of disease through better understanding of the precursors, and how their interactions cause disease."

The Wayne State University School of Medicine is the largest single-campus medical school in the country. Together with the Wayne State University Physician Group, the school is a leader in patient care and medical research in a number of areas including cancer, genetics, women's and children's health and the neurosciences.