IN THE NEWS
Variation in the BDNF gene may affect brain's regulation of appetite, study suggests.
 A single variation in the gene for brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) may influence obesity in children and adults, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study suggests that a less common version of the BDNF gene may predispose people to obesity by producing lower levels of BDNF protein, a regulator of appetite, in the brain.
The authors propose that boosting BDNF protein levels may offer a therapeutic strategy for people with the genetic variation, which tends to occur more frequently in African Americans and Hispanics, than in non-Hispanic Caucasians. The study is published in the journal Cell Reports.
"We conducted this particular analysis to understand the extent to which multiple measures of perceived discrimination were associated with types of behaviors that are known to be risk factors for cardiovascular disease in African-Americans," lead study author Mario Sims, a researcher with the Jackson Heart Study and the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
The new study found that higher levels of everyday discrimination were associated with more smoking, higher fat consumption and less sleep in both men and women.
Higher levels of lifetime discrimination were linked to more smoking in women, more fat consumption in men and less sleep for both sexes.
The connections between unhealthy behaviors and discrimination suggest that highly discriminated-against racial groups might turn to things like smoking or eating fatty food at least in part as a way to cope with stress, Sims added.
PUBLICATIONS
Mid-South TCC Highlight
Sims M, Diez-Roux AV, Gebreab SY, et al.
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2015. In press.
Scott A. Lorch, Elizabeth Enlow, The Role of Social Determinants in Explaining
Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Perinatal Outcomes, Pediatric Research accepted article preview online
14 October 2015; doi:10.1038/pr.2015.199
Prochaska JD1, Nolen AB1, Kelley H2, Sexton K3, Linder SH4, Sullivan J5.
Hum Ecol Risk Assess. 2014;20(4):980-994.
Pediatr Res. 2015 Oct 20. doi: 10.1038/pr.2015.208.
Metzgar CJ1, Nickols-Richardson SM.
JMIR Res Protoc. 2015 Mar 26;4(1):e36. doi: 10.2196/resprot.4008.
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
The award budget has been described as $10,000 to $15,000 in which two to three awards may be made.
Deadline:
November 5, 2015
EVENTS
Tuesday, November 3
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
will highlight emerging approaches being piloted by the Federal Interagency Health Equity Team (FIHET) of the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA) to promote the consideration of health equity in federal programs.
The release of the landmark Heckler Report documented the existence of health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States and called such disparities "an affront both to our ideals and to the ongoing genius of American medicine." The report led to significant developments to support programming to address health disparities and promote health equity at the federal, state, tribal, territorial and local levels.
BOOKS
I
n Beyond Obamacare, James S. House shows that health care reforms, including the Affordable Care Act, cannot resolve this crisis because they do not focus on the underlying causes for the nation's poor health outcomes, which are largely social, economic, environmental, psychological, and behavioral.
House demonstrates that the problems of our broken health care and insurance system are interconnected with our large and growing social disparities in education, income, and other conditions of life and work. House calls for a complete reorientation of how we think about health. He concludes that we need to move away from our misguided and almost exclusive focus on biomedical determinants of health, and to place more emphasis on addressing social, economic,and other inequalities.
Source:
http://bit.ly/1LmBtix
RESOURCES
New webinar series designed
for community-based, faith-based and other organizations that want to learn the basics of creating successful federal grant applications.
Getting to Know the Federal Government and Funding Opportunities
November 5 at 3:30 pm EDT
A federal funders panel reveals best practices in responding to federal funding announcements. Opportunities for federal funding are identified.
Register for this webinar.
The National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA)
The NPA, an initiative led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, promotes cross-sector, multi-level and systems-oriented approaches for tackling health disparities. The cross-sector focus of the NPA evolves from the understanding that disparities are rooted in the inequitable distribution of underlying social determinants of health, such as education, employment, and environmental quality. The NPA envisions a path to health equity that includes changes to policies, practices and programs over time, at multiple levels of government and across different sectors, such that the promotion of health equity becomes integral to how organizations operate.
To support the integration of health equity in programs, policies and practices, the Federal Interagency Health Equity Team (FIHET) has created a regular speaker webinar series to create a collaborative and learning environment to highlight current practices and innovative strategies for this type of work across sectors and at different levels of government.
Webinar Series Learning Objectives
Participants will learn about:
- Ongoing activities to integrate equity in policies and programs that are aligned with health or specific social determinants of health within public, private, health and non-health sector organizations.
- Examples of policy, administrative, data and knowledge levers that have initiated, facilitated and/or supported efforts to promote equity through a featured program or policy aligned with health or specific social determinants of health.
- Strategies, resources and tools used to promote equity through a featured program's activities/operations.
- Challenges, needs and opportunities to promote equity through a program.
- Strategies for identifying opportunities to promote equity through programs or policies.
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MID-SOUTH TRANSDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE CENTER FOR HEALTH DISPARITIES RESEARCH
1717 11th Avenue South, Medical Towers 516 I Birmingham, AL 35294-4410, USA
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM I JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY I UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI MEDICAL CENTER LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER I DILLARD UNIVERSITY
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