Downstate and UAlbany Awarded "Best of New York" for Health Disparities Tool

Sep 23, 2016

Brooklyn, NY – SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and the SUNY University at Albany have jointly received a Best of New York Award from the Center for Digital Government (CDG) for a collaboration tool designed to share health-disparities research and scholarship between the two institutions.

CDG's awards program salutes IT professionals and projects in New York State and local government organizations and educational institutions. Its "Best IT Collaboration Among Organizations Award" recognized Downstate and UAlbany for their "Health Disparities and Inequalities Collaboration Platform (HDIC)." The platform enables faculty, researchers, and clinicians at Downstate and UAlbany to communicate, access real-time information, and share ideas and resources.

"I'm extremely pleased that Downstate and UAlbany were recognized for this project," said Moro O. Salifu, MD, MPH, MBA, professor and chair of medicine at Downstate, and principal investigator for the Brooklyn Health Disparities Program at Downstate. "The tool enhances collaboration between our faculties and expands our ability to conduct research on barriers to high quality health care."

HDIC was developed by the IT team at UAlbany. It is a one-stop destination allowing access to resources and information and includes federal funding opportunity announcements, faculty, researcher and clinician profiles, publications and papers, federal awards databases, national analytical resources, and a communications and notification portal. While the HDIC platform is still in its infancy, the tool has tremendous potential for replication in other scientific fields.

“Ingenuity, collaboration and a lot of hard work on the part of New York government departments have yielded great innovations that are improving government interactions with citizens,” said Todd Sander, executive director of the Center for Digital Government.

The NIH-funded Brooklyn Health Disparities Center at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University is a multidisciplinary partnership between Downstate, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, and the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President. A borough-wide resource, BHDC's agenda includes advocating for parity in medical health and mental health care, increasing the number of people of color who work in the health professions, and understanding the underlying social, environmental, economic and political determinants of health disparities.

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About SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University

Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn is one of four academic health centers (AMCs) in The State University of New York (SUNY) 64-campus system and the only SUNY AMC in New York City dedicated to health education, research, and patient care for the borough’s 2.7 million residents. Its flagship hospital, University Hospital at Downstate (UHD), is a teaching hospital and benefits from the expertise of Downstate’s exceptional medical school and world-class academic center research facilities. With a staff of over 800 physicians representing 53 specialties and subspecialties, Downstate offers comprehensive healthcare services to the community.

UHD provides high-risk neonatal and infant services, pediatric nephrology, and dialysis for kidney diseases and is the only kidney transplantation program in Brooklyn. Beyond its clinical expertise, Downstate houses a range of esteemed educational institutions, including its College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, School of Graduate Studies, and School of Public Health. Downstate fosters innovation through its multifaceted biotechnology initiative, the Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT, which support early-stage and more mature biotech companies.