Solutions

RHRI CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS Bryant Smalley, Ph.D., Psy.D. and Jacob Warren, Ph.D. accepted the funds for a five-year project to eliminate rural health disparities.

Rural Health Research Institute Awarded $5.1 Million Grant

Georgia Southern University’s Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) has been awarded a $5.1 million grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) designating the RHRI as a Center of Excellence for the Elimination of Rural Health Disparities. The grant was received by RHRI Co-Executive Directors Bryant Smalley, Ph.D., Psy.D. and Jacob Warren, Ph.D. Smalley is a clinical psychologist in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and Warren is an epidemiologist in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH).

Funding for the new five-year project comes from NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and will allow the RHRI to enact a comprehensive rural health disparity elimination program spanning research, training and community outreach. The grant’s activities include developing and testing new rural-specific health promotion programs designed to improve diabetes, hypertension and prostate cancer outcomes; enacting a rural health disparities elimination summer training program for undergraduate and graduate students; implementing new mentoring programs for faculty wishing to pursue careers in rural health; and creating a new community capacity-building initiative to improve health outcomes throughout rural Southeast Georgia.

The interdisciplinary project, led by Smalley and Warren, brings together a campus-wide team of faculty from eight departments for the project. Collaborators include faculty from CLASS, JPHCOPH and the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Georgia Southern’s RHRI is an interdisciplinary hub of rural health research and outreach that spans five Colleges within the University. Its mission is to improve health in rural areas by promoting cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research and outreach that connects faculty from diverse fields and promotes the development of researchers examining rural health issues.