From L to R: Holly Harden, Tamara McCullum, Ellen Detlefsen, Udo Oyoyo, Teressa Grimes and Gretchen Higginbottom.

Over the past year, you have probably shared a classroom with Tamara McCullum, Teressa Grimes, Holly Harden, Gretchen Higginbottom and Udo Oyoyo.  Did you know that these colleagues are research fellows working on a distinctive health initiative that is locating and evaluating minority-sensitive health information on the Internet?

The Highmark Minority Health Link project is the brainchild of University of Pittsburgh Professors Ellen Detlefsen, Nancy Washington and Center for Minority Health Director Ed Duncan.  Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is the major funding partner of the initiative, providing three years of funding.

The founders identified the need to build a minority-targeted health information website; to fund student researchers in the MLIS program who plan to become future medical informatics specialists; and to identify community partners and enable their constituents in accessing health information on the 'net.

The Fellows are researching six topics: depression (Gretchen); Alzheimers (Holly); asthma (Tamara); colon cancer (Udo); and nutrition (Teressa).  Each researcher is responsible for creating a web page with background information on the particular disease, scope notes, factoids, assessment tests and related links. 

Combined, these web pages will serve as a national gateway for minority-sensitive health information, particularly for the African American community. This gateway is filling a void in cyberspace; little information of this nature currently exists.  This project is unique in that it brings together different diseases and areas of concerns in one place.

In addition to conducting individual research, fellows are also busy making community connections.  Community partners include the Sheraden and Homewood Branches of the Carnegie Public Library, the Lemington Center, Allen Memorial Chapel, Allequippa Terrace housing project and WPIC Satellite Clinic at the Hill House.  Future partners include the Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Gateway Medical Society. 

First year Fellows Kim Calhoun and Kristina Carlstrom went to Homewood Branch library, assessed the library's needs, and with project funds were able to provide the library with a printer and a large number of consumer health books for the collection.  Likewise, the Lemington Center was granted a computer and printer, and staff training about how to locate and retrieve health information for their constituents.  The second year Fellows have been doing similar work with the Allen Memorial Chapel and the WPIC Satellite Clinic at the Hill House.

The 1999-2000 Highmark Fellows have fervently begun their contribution to the medical information field.  Who knows how they will contribute down the road? It is too early to tell, but I suspect we can expect great things. 

For more information on the Highmark Fellows Program see: http://www.sis.pitt.edu/%7Eellen/highmark.html