Transcript: Developing Health Leaders of Tomorrow

Trisha Lee Wilkins, PharmD 

I’ve always wanted to do research. I believe it was the type of research that I wanted to do that would be the question.

Tanjala S. Purnell, MPH 

I was inspired to pursue a career in health services research, focusing on health disparities, after my personal experiences of witnessing so many in my community suffer from chronic conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease.

Ruth G. Fesahazion, BSHS 

It’s not enough just to have research sitting in journals. I think it needs to be translated, and it needs to be translated for the communities that really need that type of help.

Anne C. Beal, MD, MPH, former president, the Aetna Foundation 

Trish, Tangela and Ruth and many others like them are diligently studying our health care system so that they can make it work better for all Americans.

That’s why we established the AcademyHealth/Aetna Foundation Minority Scholars Program to help train the next generation of health services researchers.

We’re pleased to have a powerful partner in that mission -- AcademyHealth, the preeminent professional society of health services researchers and health policy analysts.

Alejandra Casillas, MD 

I come from a family of immigrant parents and I think from that time was always very interested in the issues of health disparities and particularly issues that affect immigrant populations.

Chima Ndumele, MPH 

My parents are from Nigeria. I grew up in some low-income communities, so I’ve been pretty aware for a while that there’s a relationship between resources and outcomes.

Kara Odom Walker, MD, MPH, MSHS 

I was given all of these opportunities in my life to make a difference. Many people have sacrificed to make this path for me and so I just feel obligated to give back and make a difference in the community around me.

Anne C. Beal

The Minority Scholars Program participants are studying the causes of, and solutions for, disparities in health care that that we know exist in the United States.

Why is it important to understand and address these problems? Because we know that if our complex health care system doesn’t work well for the most vulnerable among us, it won’t work for any of us.

It doesn’t have to be this way. By better understanding why the system doesn’t work well for some, we can begin to figure out how to make health care better for all.

Matthew P. Banegas. MPH, MS

Being from the border area, the U.S./Mexico Border, we see along that region there higher rates of mortality from breast cancer if we compare it to Hispanics from the interior of either country. So there’s something along that little lip that we need to investigate.

Chima Ndumele, MPH

I do a lot of work in community health centers and more broadly in safety net institutions. Safety net institutions are often underresourced places that serve vulnerable populations.

Dena Ned, MSW 

What I’m interested in is understanding how the stakeholders within urban Indian health service delivery.

Rachel R. Hardeman, MPH

There’s data, there’s research that is showing that the outcomes aren’t the same for different populations and different groups.

Kristine Molina, MS

Long term what I see is to use my work for intervention development in terms of for those, for Latino populations who actually do experience discrimination, who report it, and that actually also report that it affects them.

Kara Odom Walker, MD, MPH, MSHS 

There are many types of settings -- either safety net settings or other types of settings -- where care is just fragmented. We don’t know how to talk to one another as doctors or as from the primary care office to the inpatient care or emergency care, and so I really want to understand now how we integrate care delivery for vulnerable and minority populations.

Anne C. Beal

The AcademyHealth/Aetna Foundation Minority Scholars are an impressive group. They include physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, researchers and policy analysts.

Whatever their backgrounds and research interests, they share one thing -- a deep commitment to using what they know, and what they will learn, to make a difference.

Anika Hines, PhD, MPH 

It’s my hope that I’ll be able to translate some of the stories that I’ve experienced myself, or that my family members have experienced, and things that are usually considered sort of anecdotal, and really use the science to understand those things in a more rigorous manner, and to then take those findings to communicate to individuals who have the power to change things.

Tisha Felder, PhD, MSW

I really would love at the end of my career to be able to see a difference in access to different health care services as a result of either things that I’ve investigated or people that I’ve worked with who’ve been able to utilize the findings that I have as well as those of my colleagues and apply that in such a way that we actually see some change in those areas.

Anne C. Beal

At the Aetna Foundation, we know the work we do, and the impact we have, is only as good as the quality of the people and projects we support. We are pleased to support the next generation of researchers striving to make a difference. The AcademyHealth/Aetna Foundation Minority Scholars may be a small group, but they are addressing big problems in our health care system. We all can expect great things from them.

Robert Lucero, PhD, MPH, RN 

I just want to make a difference in one person’s life. I’ve had the ability to do that as a clinician, and I haven’t yet realized that as a researcher.

Ndidi Amutah-Hardrick, MPH

I feel very blessed to be a researcher and to have an advanced degree and to think analytically and critically and to be at the table at an opportunity and in a place where most people from my environment will never experience.

Trisha Lee Wilkins, PharmD 

I’m not going to save the world, but I can save certain people from, you know, avoidable hospitalizations, from chronic illness, from whatever morbidity, mortality events could happen as a result of an unfair system or just circumstances.

Alejandra Casillas, MD 

We can’t leave any group behind. We need to include everybody, and that’s why the whole notion of eliminating disparities exists because if we’re going to live as a healthy nation we really need to make sure that all portions of people living in this nation have access to care and have access to high-quality care.