The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Health Professions recently launched the Academy for Addressing Health Disparities through Health Care Leadership. The two-week academy is designed to increase the number of African Americans and students from other underrepresented groups in graduate-level health care management programs.
The inaugural cohort includes eight students from the health care management and public health programs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Eventually the academy will be open to all students across the southeastern United States with preference given to University of Alabama at Birmingham students as well as students from historically Black colleges and universities.
The academy will offer preparation courses for the Graduate Record Examination, mentoring services, graduate school application workshops, resume building seminars, and leadership development activities.
Allyson Hall, a professor of health policy and the faculty leader of the academy stated that “we created the academy because health care organizations need a diverse management workforce dedicated to meeting the needs of increasingly diverse patient populations. Unfortunately, many graduate programs across the country struggle to attract qualified applicants from underrepresented groups.”
Dr. Hall joined the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2015. Earlier she taught at the University of Florida and for 12 years was the research director for the Florida Center for Medicaid and the Uninsured. Dr. Hall is a graduate of the University of Miami, where she majored in finance. She holds an MBA from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in health policy from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
