University Developing Telehealth Hub to Tackle Racial Health Disparities

Jackson State University’s College of Health Sciences is using a $700,000 grant to launch a Digital Telehealth Hub (DTH) that aims to address racial health disparities.

The resource aims to address the challenges faced by underserved populations in accessing healthcare services. Officials at the Mississippi school say they’ll be looking at connected health to take on health inequities and social injustices that have been highlighted by the ongoing pandemic.

“Jackson State University is uniquely positioned to design, implement and scale DTH solutions,” Girmay Berhie, PhD, Dean of the College of Health Sciences, said in a press release. “It has the potential to reduce costs, increase access, improve health outcomes and reshape how African Americans interact with healthcare systems and providers.”

The College of Health Sciences is collaborating with city officials, the World Economic Forum, and the San Diego-based Scripps Research Translational Institute, a national leader in digital health research, to develop the telehealth hub.

Mario Azevedo, a professor at JSU’s College of Liberal Arts, and Fidelis Ikem, the Dean of JSU’s College of Business, are working as co-principal investigators of the project, according to the press release.

The telehealth hub will consist of three phases. 

In phase one, which is funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation grant, public health experts from JSU will conduct collaborative research to understand how to use telehealth and the challenges that accompany it. Officials say they will work to earn the trust of the community during this phase as well.

in phase two, the researchers will partner with other research institutions, technology companies, healthcare systems, and community organizers to raise awareness of health disparities and social challenges. These organizations will also assist in designing digital health solutions for the hub that will address health inequities.

In the third and final phase, JSU researchers will employ those solutions and innovations in their communities, aiming to tackle racial health disparities and improve health outcomes for communities of color. 

The university will then study how these interventions are working and share the data with its partners, the community, academic peers, and health stakeholders to improve and expand the methods.

The project leaders will follow the research guidelines of Managing Epidemics with Consumer Wearables, which “aims to establish an ethical approach for public health stakeholders to respond to pandemics using insights derived from consumer wearable devices.”