April 18, 2022

National Minority Health Month The theme for this year’s National Minority Health Month is Give Your Community a Boost! The theme focuses on the continued importance of COVID-19 vaccination, including boosters, as one of the strongest tools we can use to protect communities from COVID-19, which has disproportionately affected communities of color.  Learn More

Systemic racism root of COVID health disparities, experts say Misinformation, historic barriers to care and systemic racism created a dangerous combination that exacerbated health disparities among New Jersey residents of color and white residents during the pandemic, according to a panel of doctors. Learn More

Gaps plague Hispanic maternity data. N.J. officials say better data would mean better outcomes. Maternal health experts in New Jersey agree that efforts to gather data on Hispanic moms and infants has been a struggle across the state and nation. Learn More

Call for Requests: Community Engagement Virtual Salons (CEVS) CEVS bring researchers together with patients, community members, and health care stakeholders to actively participate in cross-talk. It provides a forum for generating research questions, identifying evidence gaps, and defining outcomes meaningful to patients. To see a CEVS in action, take a look at the summary video featured below. If you're interested in working with us, click here to learn more.

Upcoming Events

Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes Celebration Event April 20, 3pm ET Join the Beloved Community Initiative Celebration Event at the President’s Tent in the Honors College Courtyard on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus. This year the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes (CACP) will be honoring members across the Rutgers community and announcing the 2022 Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award recipients. Join the Office of Equity and Inclusion for an afternoon celebrating and recognizing their commitment to engaging in important efforts in promoting and practicing diversity, inclusion, equity, and access.

Register Here

Intersection of Politics and Public Health Season 2, Episode 8 Join host Mary Marchetta O’Dowd as she welcomes Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, who shares her insights on the partisan divide over the pandemic and the importance of polling to help us better understand our current situation as well as what it could mean for the future.

Listen Here

Funding Opportunities

Food and Health Research Using the Consumer Food Data System RWJF has widened its focus on childhood obesity to consider issues such as nutritional adequacy; upstream factors affecting food supply; nutritional assistance; and indicators of food quality and availability. To contribute to research, evaluation, and learning, especially for its healthy children and families focus area, RWJF is partnering with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Economic Research Service (ERS) on an opportunity to make their valuable data on food and nutrition available to researchers. By doing so, we hope to support research that will help to overcome structural barriers to equitable access to healthy food. RWJF and ERS are announcing a call for proposals (CFP) for researchers who will use one or more restricted-use data assets from the CFDS. We seek to develop a cohort of researchers from diverse academic disciplines and institutions who will produce policy-relevant research on food policy; food retail markets; consumer behaviors related to food purchases and diet; and USDA nutrition assistance programs. Application deadline is May 16, 2022, 3:00 p.m. ET Learn more here.

Community Resources

New Jersey COVID-19 Information Hub: The State of New Jersey has put together a list of resources about the COVID-19 virus including testing sites, signs and symptoms, and FAQs about social services.  You can find community-based and local COVID-19 testing site locations and hours here. Middlesex County residents can register for a free COVID-19 test at sites throughout the county. Appointments required. The sites provide saliva-based test kits developed at Rutgers University. Visit New Jersey’s COVID-19 Vaccine Registration site to pre-register for the vaccine. New Jersey's Covid-19 Vaccine Appointment Call Center can be reached at 855-568-0545.

New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science https://njacts.rbhs.rutgers.edu/community/ This newsletter is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number, UL1TR003017 to Rutgers University. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH. You are receiving this newsletter because you are a member of NJ ACTS or have signed up to receive our emails. To add a subscriber, please click here. Send story ideas to njactscommunity@rwjms.rutgers.edu Copyright 2021 New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science, all rights reserved.