From HIV to COVID-19: Addressing Health Equity with Faith-Health-Academic Partnerships
Jannette Berkley-Patton, PhD, is a Professor in the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Medicine Biomedical &Health Informatics Department, Director of the UMKC Community Health Research Group, and Director of the UMKC Health Equity Institute. Her expertise is in using tailored community-engaged approaches to develop, implement, and evaluate health screening and linkage to care interventions focused on HIV/STIs/HCV, mental health, dementia, and diabetes with African American faith communities, primarily NIH-funded, and also with a focus on mental health and resilience with urban youth in community settings. She is dedicated to engaging underserved populations, students, and community-health-academic partnerships in addressing health disparities using novel scalable and sustainable methods. She is the PI of a recently awarded grant to conduct a clinical trial testing a religiously-culturally tailored intervention to increase COVID-19 testing and linkage to care with African American faith-based organizations in NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations program. Dr. Berkley-Patton has been honored with induction into the KU Women’s Hall of Fame, the University of Missouri System Cross-Cultural Community Engagement Presidential Award, and just this year was appointed as the Mr. James. B. Nutter, Mrs. Annabel Nutter, and Dr. Harry Jonas, MD, Professorship in the UMKC School of Medicine.