Category: 2014 ERHD Alumni Study

ERHD Program – Published in Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities

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The Ethnic and Rural Health Disparities (ERHD) has truly come along way since our start just a few years in 2010. With the support of the Department of Public Health at ECU and particularly the previous chairperson – Dr. Lloyd Novick — the ERHD program became established within the system of ECU as one of the unique online programs in the country. Once we began to enroll students in 2010 and 2011, I had a good feeling that we were paving a new way to provide graduate health professionals a higher level of expertise training in public health and medicine that was focused on issues such as health disparities, rural health disparities, ethnic and racial health disparities, global public health, qualitative research, cultural competency and African American health.

With the success of graduating outstanding ERHD students for four solid years, by 2014 I decided that our ERHD program needed to evaluate itself in the manner of an ERHD Alumni Study. With the assistance of our graduate assistant at the time — Shanekia Joyner — Shanekia and I along with Dr. Justin Moore developed the research project and surveyed as many graduates that had the time to complete our online survey.

In March, I presented the results of our 2014 ERHD Alumni Survey study at the Association of Prevention Teaching Research (APTR) Conference in Charleston, SC.. That was a major success and I received invaluable feedback and support from all the professionals who attended the conference.

Now we are receiving additional professional acknowledgment of our program from the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. The journal has published our research study as of September 2015 with an online version and later in 2016 the print (hardcopy) version will be printed in this professional academic peer-reviewed journal.

Here is the article and it is entitled, “A New Online Strategy in Teaching Racial and Ethnic Health and Health Disparities to Public Health Professionals.” After review, let us know what you think about our ERHD program by emailing me at: baileye@ecu.edu. We feel very proud of our online ERHD Graduate Certificate program and all those who have assisted us in varying capacities to keep it going from semester to semester and year to year.

I want to sincerely thank all those who have believed in our online ERHD Certificate Program, supported our program in the past and who are continuing to support our ERHD program for the future. I especially feel pleased and grateful for all of our OUTSTANDING ERHD GRADUATES!! Each one of you are THE NEW LEADERS in the field of PUBLIC HEALTH AND MEDICINE!!

ERHD 2014 Alumni Study Report

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It gives me great pleasure to announce that our ERHD 2014 Alumni Study Report is officially completed. This ERHD Alumni study actually began last year – fall semester 2013. With the assistance of our then – graduate assistant – Shanekia Blackshear Joyner – we conducted a university-based research study. Once we completed the design of the alumni study, Shanekia sent the alumni survey out to all available alumni. Several weeks later, we received all of the completed surveys and then conducted our analysis.

This university-based research study was a study of our graduates. The major objectives of the Ethnic and Rural Health Disparities (ERHD) Alumni study were: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of the ERHD program; and (2) to assess new strategies for improving our ERHD program. To evaluate the effectiveness of the ERHD program, we developed a semi-structured ERHD Alumni survey which included quantitative and qualitative open-ended questions. The ERHD Alumni survey was conducted using web-based Qualtrics software. Quantitative and qualitative results from alumni survey indicate that the ERHD program is a major success with over seventy-five (75%) stated that they strongly agreed that the ERHD met their expectations as a certificate program and that eighty-eight (88%) percent strongly agreed the ERHD program provided them with additional insight and skills related to ethnic and rural health disparities. Moreover, the five qualitative themes provided reliable personal accounts from our ERHD alumnus as to the significance and positive impact of this program to their professional public health and medical careers.

I want to thank Shanekia Blackshear Joyner for all of her assistance, suggestions and effort during this study. She is now one of our ERHD graduates.

I also want to thank Dr. Justin Moore – Co-Director (University of South Carolina) for his input throughout the alumni study.

Finally, I want to thank ECU’s Department of Public Health, Brody School of Medicine, ECU’s Center for Health Disparities, and our former Department Chairperson Dr. Lloyd Novick for all of their support for our ERHD program since the very beginning in 2009.

To receive a copy of our 2014 ERHD Alumni Study report, just email me at: baileye@ecu.edu.