Meharry launching School of Global Health to address health equity
Meharry Medical College's new School of Global Health will accept its first 100 students next fall, officials say, continuing the historically Black college's ambitious bid to become an internationally recognized center for health equity research.
The school will be part of Meharry's Global Health Equity Institute, a policy think tank that launched in January and is led by Daniel Dawes, formerly the executive director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Officials are finalizing the curriculum, pending accreditation approval and hiring faculty, Dawes said. That is all expected to be complete by this summer. Degree programs are expected to include those for global health equity, health equity, health law policy and management, complex health systems leadership, public health and epidemiology.
"We anticipate having an incredible faculty of 23 scholars and we have a research staff that we've been building," Dawes said. "It is truly a school that is an enterprise that will look at research, look at service, look at developing materials for our policymakers at all levels."
The school's founding board of advisors includes an array of physicians, business and health care executives, as well as former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher.
“Meharry’s future School of Global Health is primed to be a center for health equity innovation at a historically black institution that has been a leader in responding to health inequities for over a century and a half," board member Donna Christensen, who represented the U.S. Virgin Islands as a non-voting delegate in Congress, said in a written statement.
This announcement follows Meharry's recent $80 million partnership with major international pharmaceutical firms to create a genetic research institute on the campus and finance programs to encourage Nashville-area students — particularly from communities of color — to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The Diaspora Human Genomics Institute at Meharry will seek at least 500,000 samples of genetic materials from volunteers hailing from communities of color, with plans to add to a larger genetic database. The idea is to increase diversity in genetic research samples to help find treatments for diseases.
Many major universities have schools and programs dedicated to global public health, including Vanderbilt University's Institute for Global Health. But Meharry officials believe their school is the first of its kind in the nation.
As initially conceived, the new school and institute will examine structural discrimination in healthcare, here and around the globe. The idea is to develop policies and practices to improve the health outcomes of population groups that tend to fare poorly.
The school will not be separately accredited. Rather it will be part of Meharry Medical College, which is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. The public health programs offered in the school will be accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health.
James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College, has said the idea was inspired by gaps in health care, treatment and prevention he witnessed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We want to send people into the world who have the skill set they need to make meaningful change," Hildreth said. "These are big problems we're trying to solve that relate to health equity. And it's going to take a cross-disciplinary approach to solving."
Frank Gluck is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at fgluck@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FrankGluck.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Meharry launching School of Global Health to address health equity
