New UB Institute will Study Health Disparity on East Side

UB Press Conference
Photo credit (WBEN Photo/Brendan Keany)

BUFFALO (WBEN) - "The announcement of the Community Health Equity Research Institute is the difference between life and death," said Mayor Byron Brown.

This past Sunday, while they were watching the Bills game, Brown and his wife received the dreaded call that no family wants to hear - her 53-year-old brother had died from a heart attack.

"Later that day, the family gathered and talked about their family history and supported each other, and it came out that my wife's father...died at the same age - 53," Brown continued. "For far too long, African Americans across our nation, our state, our region and right here in Buffalo have suffered from the devastating impacts of racially-based health disparities."

On Thursday, the University at Buffalo took a major step at trying to reverse that trend, as they announced the formation of the Community Health Equity Research Institute.

UB is holding a press conference to launch the Community Health Equity Research Institute - a collaborative effort among faculty and stakeholders aimed at finding the root cause of health disparities in the region and to then develop solutions to those problems. @NewsRadio930 pic.twitter.com/NqWxtc338h

— Brendan Keany (@BrendanKeany) December 12, 2019

"Through this Institute, faculty researchers will work alongside  our community partners to address the root causes of health inequities among African Americans living in Buffalo's East Side, with a goal of developing and testing innovative solutions to these important problems," said Tim Murphy, a SUNY distinguished professor in the Jacob's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "We know our neighbors on Buffalo's East Side are more likely to have serious, chronic and preventable diseases, as well as significantly higher mortality rates."

However, Murphy noted that these problems cannot be solved by simply focusing on health because many of the factors linked to poor health outcomes aren't necessarily directly related to the human body. For example, education and economic standing are two of the determinant factors of health, as they often dictate what kind of lifestyle one would live.

"We soon discovered that we could not possibly address the health crisis in our community without addressing the inequalities and inequities in education, housing, economics, criminal justice and the environment," said Reverend George Nicholas, who serves on the African American Health Disparities Taskforce.

Nicholas explains that it's up to the University to lay out and build up the necessary staff to carry out the work, and for his taskforce, he says it's their responsibility to make sure this topic remains at the forefront of conversation throughout the region. This could present quite the challenge considering the vast nature of the Institute combined with the fact that health inequity on Buffalo's East Side will not be a simple overnight fix, but rather a generational shift that needs to begin at the grassroots level.

"The next step is really to hold each other accountable for really addressing the issues at the root level," said Nicholas. "I'm not saying that it will, but any time you do something within a big operation like a university, the mission can kind of get lost and things of that nature. It's very important for us that we keep the issue around health equity at the center of this work."