So the Health Disparities Research Center at Xavier was established on January 14, 2002, with the main focus of creating an infrastructure to enable faculty, staff, and professional staff to conduct health disparities related research, but we do that through research, community engagement and our practice. The initial focus of the center was focusing on cancer research, diabetes, and asthma. However, we've expanded it since then.
We have a Center Of Excellence grant that allows students who are in pharmacy school to be able to engage in research with a faculty member of their choice. So it could be in clinical research, it could be in basic research, drug discovery. A lot of the different avenues by which the students can be exposed to research.
Doing research in the College of Pharmacy is extremely important, because it allows you to demonstrate that you have independent thinking skills, that you have troubleshooting ability, that you understand things that are kind of outside the box. The term, health disparities, really is referring to differences in health outcomes based on population. So in the case of let's say, breast cancer, we find that African American women may experience breast cancer at a similar or even lower rate than white women, but have poor outcomes. So the question is, why is that happening? Is it biology? Is it socioeconomic issues? Or is it the delivery of the healthcare?
So the Center of Excellence Scholars Program is a federally funded initiative that allows highly competitive, highly motivated students to have opportunities to do research, whether it's basic, clinical or translational research. They have the opportunity to apply as early as the first year, and they could do that work on the same project, up through the third year, could even request an extension on the project, but it helps them to increase their analytical and critical thinking skills.
The Center of Excellence Research Program is a program that is offered through Xavier University College of Pharmacy. Pharmacy students can apply to this program throughout their experience through College of pharmacy. Most people tend to want to apply in their first year of pharmacy school so that they can have time to like start research with a professor, and even have a manuscript by the end of the time that they graduate.
