Drexel gets $20 million grant to coordinate health inequity research around the country

Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health has received a $20 million federal grant to coordinate research about how to address health inequities around the country.

The grant is part of the National Institute of Health’s Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society program (ComPASS), which will dedicate $171 million over five years to research and outreach projects at 25 community organizations nationwide. Dornsife will oversee all 25 projects, which focus on societal issues that affect health, such as systemic racism, a lack of access to healthy foods, and barriers to adequate health care.

Projects include efforts to address food insecurity in Florida; to improve access to medications for opioid use disorder in Montana; and to help farmworkers in Arizona get better housing and health care. One community project led by the Asian Community Health Coalition in Philadelphia aims to improve access to chronic health condition treatment and mental health services for Asian Americans.

The grant is unique because the NIH typically funds “disease-focused research,” said Amy Carroll-Scott, an associate professor and chair of Dornsife’s department of community health and prevention.

“We talk a lot about changing structures, but we don’t fund experiments like this to see what it takes to do it,” she said.

Carroll-Scott said she was excited that a Philadelphia-based program had received one of the ComPASS grants. And since she’s also conducted research about preventing gun violence in Philadelphia, she said she is excited to work with another ComPASS-funded program in Texas that’s researching the health consequences of community members’ interactions with police.

“Communities plagued by violence experience all kinds of health inequities, and they also tend to be over-policed,” she said. “How do we dismantle the cycle of violence?”

Jan Eberth, the chair of the school’s department of health management and policy, said she hopes the project will inspire similar programs in the future — especially those led by community organizations, not academic institutions.

Community organizations are deeply entrenched in the societal issues that affect how people access health care, and are key partners in finding solutions, the researchers said.

Rather than setting the agenda themselves, Dornsife researchers leading the grant coordination center will provide technical assistance, training, and coaching to help community organizations execute their vision.