Center for Health Equity

Engaging Communities, Eliminating Health Disparities, Advancing Social Justice

Since 2011, the Center for Health Equity (CHE) seeks to understand and ultimately eliminate health inequities in under resourced, vulnerable, and underserved communities and populations, particularly those in Western Pennsylvania. CHE addresses issues attributed to institutional racism, builds strategic partnerships across sectors and communities, acknowledges a social equity in all policies perspective, and the public sector's role in achieving health equity for its' citizenry. 

Minimize Mission

The Center for Health Equity focuses on excess premature mortality (deaths before age 65) in populations experiencing health inequities with four major aims:

  1. To gain a further understanding of the causes of health inequities with a focus on Western Pennsylvania and, more specifically, Allegheny County
  2. To develop, implement, and evaluate interventions designed to reduce those inequities
  3. To provide capacity-building services to community organizations in our region
  4. To disseminate findings and experiences through the CHE website, conferences, and peer-reviewed publications.

Gary-Webb, Baumann featured in new book The Science of Health Disparities Research

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NIMHD - The Science of Health Disparities Research is an in-depth volume for comprehensive information on conducting clinical and translational health disparities studies and features EPI's Tiffany Gary-Webb and BCHS' Sara Baumann (BCHS '19) authored the chapter "Racial/Ethnic, Socioeconomic, and Other Social Determinants."   

Meet Taylor Robinson, Health Justice Scholar

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Research with a health disparities focus is the core of Taylor Robinson's (EPI MPH '22) pursuits. She has been involved in research throughout college and in high school. In college, she was an intern in the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Internship and was a 2019 Amgen NIH Scholar. Her research topics have included patient-physician communication bias, linear regression correlates of behavioral change techniques for smoking cessation on Twitt... 

Meet Julia Donnelly, Health Justice Scholar

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Julia Donnelly (BCHS MPH '21) is a second-year student who is also pursuing a Certificate in Health Equity. "After taking the Seminar in Health Equity, I developed an interest in studying the incarcerated and reentry populations. I am specifically interested in how racial disparities in policing, sentencing, incarceration, and lack of investment in social services supporting re-entry efforts affect the health of offenders, their families, and th... 

"Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings." 

-Nelson Mandela

Schuyler wins Bernard D. Goldstein Award for work on environmental exposures and asthma

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Alexander Schuyler (EOH '23) is the latest winner of the Bernard D. Goldstein Award in Environmental Health Disparities and Public Health Practice for his project entitled, Impact of redlining and environmental exposures on airway gene expression, oxidative homeostasis and asthma outcomes. One reviewer commented, "I am intrigued by the potential for this project to make an explicit connection between disparities and the historical practice of re...