The Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training Program (MHRT) is a grant program of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Out of 73 applicants for the School of Nursing and Health Studies MHRT 2023 summer program, 11 students were selected.
Those selected include three from Columbia University in New York and eight from the University of Miami. The 2023 cohort consists of undergraduate students to postdoctoral fellows, all of whom will be traveling to conduct research on health disparities in one of six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The research program will take place from May 15 to August 7, 2023.
As principal investigator for the program at SONHS, Dr. Johis Ortega, associate dean for hemispheric and global initiatives and professor, is pleased to introduce new international research sites in Brazil and Bolivia, as well as new projects in Peru, Mexico, and Colombia.
In addition to new global partners and grantees, Dr. Ortega welcomes five new mentors to the program this year. Originally from Brazil, Dr. Hudson Santos, SONHS associate dean for research, professor, and Dolores J. Chambreau Endowed Chair in Nursing, will serve as U.S. mentor for Brazil projects, while Dr. Yannine Estrada, SONHS research assistant professor, will serve as a U.S. mentor for the Costa Rica projects. Larissa Chaves Pedreira, associate professor, and Dr. Handerson Silva Santos, professor, both from Universidade Federal de Bahia (UFBA) School of Nursing, are foreign mentors for the Brazil research projects. Dr. Oscar Galindo Vazquez, director of the Psych-oncology Research and Development Unit at the National Cancer Institute (INCan) of Mexico, will mentor grantees assigned to his cancer survivorship research initiative in Mexico City.
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the MHRT grantees are scheduled to go abroad this summer—either to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, or Peru. To learn more about the latest MHRT cohort at SONHS, visit https://mhrt.sonhs.miami.edu/about-mhrt/2022-23-grantees.
