Bringing Research to the Community
Bringing Research to the Community
By Meredith Bartron
The laboratories where discoveries are made, new drugs are developed, and diseases are brought one step closer to eradication can sometimes seem very far from the men, women, and children whose lives these discoveries are meant to improve. Even when breakthroughs receive media attention, researchers can seem distant, hard at work in their ivory towers. Not so at the Boston University School of Medicine, the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Public Health, where faculty have partnered with a number of local, state, and federal organizations to translate their research into direct and immediate community engagement. By bringing their expertise and the fruits of their scholarship directly to hospitals and classrooms in Boston and surrounding areas, these researchers are improving the health and well-being of community members who are disproportionately at risk from preventable addiction, disease, and illness.
- Addressing Inequalities with Creative StrategiesWhen Edward Bernstein, professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine (BUSM) and professor of social and behavioral sciences at the School of Public Health (SPH), and his wife, Judith Bernstein, associate professor of maternal and child health at SPH and associate professor of emergency medicine at BUSM, put an older method of treating substance abuse into a new context the results were so successful that emergency departments around the country followed their lead.
- Addressing Inequalities in Nontraditional SettingsMichelle Henshaw, associate professor and assistant dean for community partnerships and extramural affairs in the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, has also set a national example. Her outreach brings dental care and education to the Boston-area schoolchildren who need it most.
- Addressing Inequalities by Making Boston University MobileLike Boston University’s dental outreach program, CityLab—an educational outreach program created by Carl Franzblau—brings the University’s resources and knowledge directly to the community. Chairman and professor of biochemistry, as well as associate dean for graduate medical sciences at the School of Medicine, Franzblau started CityLab in 1991 with a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Research Resources.
