Xavier hosts health disparities confab

The Xavier University of Louisiana College of Pharmacy’s Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, Research and Education hosted its Eighth Health Disparities Conference March 12–14, 2015 in New Orleans.

Conference participants included clinicians (pharmacists, nurses, physician assistants, and allied health professionals), health policy makers, researchers, health educators, public and community health leaders, and students whose work incorporates the use of multidisciplinary partnerships to build collaborations to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity.

Headlining the conference agenda was a presentation by the Honorable Louis W. Sullivan, the inaugural speaker in the new John Ruffin Lecture Series, Friday (March 13) at noon at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel.

Sullivan served as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during President George H.W. Bush‘s Administration and was Founding Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine. He is chair of the Sullivan Alliance – a Washington DC-based and community-focused non-profit organization created to transform and diversify health professions and education – and board chair of the National Health Museum in Atlanta, Ga. – an organization established to improve the health of Americans by enhancing health literacy and advancing healthy behaviors.

The conference was titled “From Cataloging Health Disparities to Creating Health Equity: Effective Models to Equalize Outcomes.”

This article originally published in the March 16, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.