Dr. Erica Phillips

A multi-institutional group in New York City has united to address health disparities in multiple chronic diseases through a new collaborative center.

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award by INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, making it the fourth year in a row the institution has received the accolade for its exceptional commitment to diversity and inclusion. 

A study from researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine identified economic and social conditions impacting individual and group differences in health status, known as social determinants of health, in Brooklyn and top barriers to cancer care – insights that the authors hope can inform health care organizations on how to better reach the communities they serve, reduce cancer disparities and support advocacy for needed policy changes.

Weill Cornell Medicine has received complementary grants from Genentech and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) to support a new program that aims to address socioeconomic and racial disparities and increase access to clinical trials for underserved patients with blood cancers living in Brooklyn and Queens.

The COVID-19 pandemic will potentially lead to greater disparities in cancer care and outcomes among Black and Hispanic New Yorker.

Weill Cornell Medicine has awarded eight grants of $100,000 each to faculty for a variety of research projects on COVID-19, funded by the institution’s Board of Overseers and additional donors. The grants will support studies aimed at understanding fundamental aspects of the disease, the body’s immune response and social determinants of health that affect COVID-19 outcomes. 

Physicians and public health researchers have long sounded the alarm about the high incidence of cardiovascular disease in economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods compared with more affluent ones. But in recent years, another disturbing disparity has become increasingly evident: that residents of underserved areas are also diagnosed with cancer—and die of the disease—at disproportionate rates.