In the last three decades I have focused on the epidemiology of chronic diseases, namely hypertension and prostate cancer in populations of African descent. We studied socio-demographic, anthropometric and dietary risk factors of prostate cancer, and assessed the degree to which knowledge about prostate cancer risk and access to preventive health care impacts prostate cancer early detection in African-American populations. The important role of obesity and underutilization of preventive health services in the genesis and sustenance of health disparities in the African-American population was noted. My clinical expertise in preventive and community medicine centered around maternal and child health, focusing on primary health care delivery, family planning and breastfeeding promotion programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was therefore easy to understand how poverty and lack of access to medical care can lead to health disparities in an industrialized high-income setting such as exists in the United States.
Although African-Americans record the highest rate of new HIV infection, the HIV clinic at Meharry Medical College has a very high success rate with drug adherence. The rate of HIV infection in infants of HIV positive mothers is zero. We plan to develop a culturally sensitive community-based intervention based on our successful hospital-based program in partnership with a community advisory board made up of representatives of the African-American and other minority communities that we serve. We envisage an educational and supportive intervention that will reverse the current childhood HIV trend in the community and simultaneously address childhood obesity. This project calls upon my expertise in epidemiology, community health, and international research, and provides mutual learning opportunities among collaborators. We shall facilitate the development of strong partnerships across disciplines at Meharry Medical College to address HIV disparities. Lessons learned in my current community breastfeeding promotion intervention within an early childhood obesity prevention program will be very useful. These are poster presentations of our breastfeeding promotion work.