Project Abstract Summary
Morehouse College is applying for Category A: CDC John R. Lewis Undergraduate Public Health Scholars Program: Exposure of Undergraduate, Graduate Students, and Postgraduates to Minority Health, Public Health, and Health Professions.
Morehouse College, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is the largest independent, fully accredited, historically black liberal arts college exclusively for men in the U.S. Throughout its history, the College has successfully trained undergraduate students for biomedical research careers. Furthermore, Morehouse ranks as one of the top undergraduate producers of Blacks with doctoral and medical degrees in the country. In addition, the College confers more baccalaureate degrees upon African American men than any other institution in the world. Over the past three decades, Morehouse College has had the vision to support the training of undergraduate students to diversify the public health workforce.
PHSI was created six (6) years after Project Imhotep (1988) through a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) & Prevention to support Project Imhotep which was establish in 1982 within CDC’s Division of HIV, STD & TB Prevention. PHSI was designed to train underrepresented and underserved minority students in the public health sciences. For the past 41 years, the primary goal of Project Imhotep has been to prepare underrepresented minority students for entry intro graduate programs and careers in Public Health. To continue its mission, the Morehouse College Public Health Sciences Institute is submitting a grant proposal to fund the Lewis Scholars Imhotep (LSI) Program under CDC-RFA-CD22-2201: Category A - CDC John R. Lewis Undergraduate Public Health Scholars Program: Exposure of Undergraduate, Graduate Students, and Postgraduates to Minority Health, Public Health, and Health Professions.
The Lewis Scholars Imhotep Program will address the Healthy People 2030 overarching goal to achieve health equity, eliminate health disparities, and improve the health of all groups by increasing the quality and quantity of well-trained professionals from underrepresented and underserved populations into the public health workforce. The LSI Program aims to: (a) improve student academic skills and increase interest in Public Health; (b) increased awareness of public health career opportunities; (c) increase knowledge of public health concepts, including health disparities, and social determinants of health; and (d) improve understanding of professional and behavioral expectations for public health professionals. Over 2000 students have participated in one or more of the internship programs and activities provided by PHSI and 77% of these students have earned or are pursuing an advanced degree in public health and/or in biomedical health (Duffus, W., Trawick, C., Moonesinghe R., Tola J., Truman B. & Dean, H. (2014)). The majority of the participants (55%) are currently working in a public health position including: federal (23%), state (6%), local (5%), academia (23%), non-governmental organizations (21%), and other (35%). Thus, PHSI has a substantial impact on the development of minority students represented in the areas of biostatistics, epidemiology, and occupational safety and health.