Mary Beth Terry to Lead Center for Reducing Health Disparities

A multi-institutional group in New York City has united to address health disparities in chronic diseases with the Center to Improve Chronic Disease Outcomes through Multi-level and Multi-generational Approaches Unifying Novel Interventions and Training for Health Equity (COMMUNITY Center). Led by Columbia Mailman School professor of epidemiology Mary Beth Terry, the center is rooted in public health tenets and recognizes that reducing health disparities in chronic diseases requires multi-faceted approaches that intervene on structural, community, family, and individual-level determinants of health and well-being. (Read the full announcement on the HICCC site.)

“In establishing this new collaborative center, we aim to reduce multiple chronic diseases in the communities that we serve across the New York City region, particularly in the Black and LatinX communities that face a much higher burden of chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease,” says Terry, the contact principal investigator for the Center. “Our goal is to develop, test, and implement solutions that can be scalable.”

Terry directs the Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) Office and co-leads the Cancer Population Science research program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) at NewYork-Presbyterian, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and directs the Chronic Disease Unit in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman. 

Nour Makarem, assistant professor of epidemiology, and Parisa Tehranifar, associate professor of epidemiology, are also investigators at the Center.