Theresa Gillespie will use SOM I3 Wow! Research Award to unify health disparities research at Emory
MARCH 2022
Theresa W. Gillespie, PhD, MA, BSN, Professor in the Department of Surgery and the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, and Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement for Winship Cancer Institute, has been selected to receive Emory's Imagine, Innovate, and Impact (I3) WOW! Research Award. These awards aim to promote innovative research with the potential to make a transformational impact in fundamental biomedical knowledge or translational significance.
Dr. Gillespie's research project is entitled "Building an Emory Initiative for Health Equity Research to Reduce Health Disparities in Georgia, or TURNING (HealTh EqUity Research INitiative IN Georgia)." Her co-investigators will be Randi Smith, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Surgery of Trauma/Surgical Critical Care at Grady Memorial Hospital; Joseph Lipscomb, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health; and Jessica Wells, PhD, RN, Research Assistant Professor at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
Conceived in response to the significant health disparities experienced by various populations in Georgia, and the lack of an overarching organizational connection between the many studies being undertaken by Emory investigators of these disparities, Dr. Gillespie and her team's initiative will strive to build a comprehensive, multidisciplinary partnership that will promote cross-cutting methodologies and opportunities for transdisciplinary research, training, evaluation, and translation to policy at Emory.
"The resulting group would harness all Emory-propelled health disparities projects involving both urban and rural underserved settings in Georgia, and maximize the philosophical and practical goals they share to exponentially improve the health status of our state populations," says Dr. Gillespie.
The initial aim of the effort will be to assess and catalog all health disparities research and investigative teams at Emory and its institutional partners, after which a collaborative group will be organized consisting of a cadre of multidisciplinary researchers culled from these teams that will codify health disparities' etiology, risk factors, measurement, interventions, research training, dissemination, and policies across multiple diseases and conditions. Then, operating from a common programmatic system, the group will compete for extramural funding to conduct multilevel research promoting health equity in Georgia.
It is envisioned that TURNING will cut across the divisions between disciplines and diseases, creating a new organizational structure that will facilitate novel collaborations between departments and schools and a common approach to training a new generation of disparities researchers.