Institute for the History of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Medical historian Megan Wolff runs the mental health policy arm of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Cornell medical school. She’s created a set of resource tipsheets for policymakers and journalists on subjects that connect public health and psychiatry such as opioid addiction, mental health and incarceration, and, now, the trauma of childhood separation. Each has a lot of useful information, all clearly annotated.
Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
Meharry Medical College’s Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved publishes peer-reviewed work related to health care and medically underserved communities. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, the quarterly journal regularly covers issues such as access, costs, health promotion and disease prevention, among others. Contact: Virginia Brennan, editor, 615-327-6819 or vbrennan@mmc.edu.
Center for Reducing Health Disparities
This University of California, Davis, center takes a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to the inequities in health access and quality of care. This includes a comprehensive program for research, education and teaching, and community outreach and information dissemination. It has produced a number of publications that address inequities in health for racial/ethnic/language minority populations, as well as curriculum development, and the mapping of disparities through the use of GIS.
Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute
Established in 2000, Johns Hopkins University’s Urban Health Institute aims to leverage its academic expertise to benefit East Baltimore, a typically underserved area with high poverty and health issues. While primarily focused on health issues affecting Baltimore, its work on early childhood development, teenagers’ sexual health and other areas can guide your reporting on these topics in other cities, as well as provide some expertise. The institute holds an annual symposium on the Social Determinants of Health each spring.
Center for Mental Health Disparities
This University of Louisville program promotes health and wellness in historically underserved families. Its work is interdisciplinary and collaborative, focusing on research with adults, children, couples, and families across cultures. The Center’s research is intended to contribute to understanding mental health disparities in ethnic minority families, leading to the ongoing development of culturally sensitive interventions.
Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research
Researchers at this Duke University center focus on wide range of interdisciplinary studies of health disparities from population-based data to reviews of health systems and intervention. Recent studies have looked at teen pregnancy initiatives, the impact of child care environments and HIV in the southern United States. Their work, part of the Duke Global Health Institute, focuses on health inequality worldwide.
National Center for Children in Poverty
Part of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, NCCP covers targets everything from healthy development of infants and toddlers to children’s mental health and the impacts of immigration, early care and families’ wages. Useful data measure risks for young children as well as policy and demographic changes in all 50 U.S. states.
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities
The NIMHD leads scientific research to improve minority health and eliminate health disparities. In that role, it plans, reviews, coordinates, and evaluates all minority health and health disparities research and activities of the National Institutes of Health, supports the training of a diverse research workforce and translates and disseminates research information.
Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University
Provides objective, independent analysis on the health effects of social distress, neighborhood environment, education, welfare policy, and other aspects of the social determinants of health.
The MacArthur Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health
A collaboration of scholars in medicine, psychology, sociology, and other fields who are trying to figure out how socioeconomic status alters the performance of biological systems to alter disease risk and mortality. The web site links to helpful notebooks, research papers and bibliographies.
Whitehall II Study of British Civil Servants
The first Whitehall study, started in 1967, famously showed that men in the lowest employment grades were much more likely to die prematurely than men in the highest grades. Whitehall II, launched in 1984, is tracking a larger group and includes women.
Symposium on the Social Determinants of Health
Started in 2012 at Johns Hopkins University, “to raise awareness about the impact and importance of the social determinants of health.” The website archives videos and slide presentations by experts on topics such as early life, race and gender, stress, poverty and education.