Georgia State receives $6.7 million grant for research center in health disparities

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Georgia State University with a five-year grant to start a new Center for Excellence in Health Disparities Research, which will investigate health disparity issues in Atlanta’s urban environment.

The $6.7 million grant is funded through the NIH’s National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities. The center will include major research topics, as well as outreach programs.

The new center will be based in the Institute of Public Health of the College of Health and Human Sciences, and will include researchers from public health, social work, the Center for Healthy Development and criminal justice in the college, and faculty from the departments of African-American studies, sociology, and psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Health disparities in urban areas lead to poor health, which is caused by a confluence of factors, including poverty, discrimination, unemployment, lack of access to care and the manmade environment, said Michael Eriksen, director of the Institute of Public Health.

“These factors conspire to put communities at a disadvantage in terms of health and well-being,” Eriksen said. “What we hope to do with this new, larger center of excellence is to better understand the socioeconomic forces that contribute to ill health in communities that constitute much of urban Atlanta, and the urban United States.”

Three major research areas include:

    • Investigating variations in health among disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially in the wake of Atlanta’s relocation of residents traditional public housing, undertaken by Erin Ruel, assistant professor of sociology

    • Examining the role of religion and churches in reducing drug use and the transmission of HIV, researched by professor Richard Rothenberg of the Institute of Public Health

    • Testing the use of a way to reduce child maltreatment, called the SafeCare Model from the Center for Healthy Development, by using computers; researched by associate professor Shannon Self-Brown of the center.

The university, through its Partnership for Urban Health Research, has been working in the field for several years, and faculty have built relationships with local neighborhoods, especially relationships with the communities of Neighborhood Planning Unit-V, located near Turner Field.

The new center will allow these relationships to continue and help to benefit the community over the long term, Eriksen said.

“It all starts with developing relationships with the community,” he said. “The problem historically has been that universities will get funding for a certain project, go into the community and do the project, and then the community never hears from them again. There needs to be a trusting and sustained relationship, which we’ve established.”

The center’s community work will also involve partnerships with local non-profit organizations, churches and other faith-based organizations, housing organizations and others to collect data, analyze patterns and to perform interventions, especially in the case with the computer-assisted SafeCare project to see if problems can be prevented in the future, Eriksen said.

The grant will also fund several core areas for infrastructure, including administration, research and training for GSU students, faculty and the community, as well as a community outreach area.

Eriksen also said that the center will serve as a repository of data for health and safety in the metro Atlanta area, which researchers plan to use in conjunction with the new visualization wall at the Parker H. Petit Science Center. The wall consists of a large, 200-million pixel array of computer screens, filling up a room to allow researchers to view and analyze volumes of visual information.

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Georgia’s public libraries celebrate 10 years of PINES

Georgia’s Public Information Network for Electronic Services (PINES) celebrates the start of its second decade this month, having saved the state’s public libraries more than $70 million in its first 10 years.

“PINES has evolved from a fledgling loan program at fewer than 100 facilities to a thriving network of nearly 290 public libraries and service outlets,” said Julie Walker, deputy state librarian. “Based on the costs for individual systems to provide the same services offered by PINES, we estimate that it has saved the state a very impressive amount in its first decade.”

According to PINES Program Director Elizabeth McKinney, PINES has saved Georgia’s public libraries more than $11 million in one-time costs and, exclusive of staff salaries, nearly $61.5 million in ongoing costs since its inception.

From the start, the goal of PINES was to create a statewide, borderless library — one that eliminated geographic and socio-economic barriers and would provide equal access to information for all Georgians. The program went live at 98 libraries in 26 public library systems on Dec. 15, 1999, offering a shared catalog of approximately 1.8 million items. It achieved its largest annual growth in 2001, when 111 libraries in 16 systems were added. PINES issued its 1 millionth card in May 2003 and its 2 millionth card in November 2008.

Today, PINES is in use at 51 library systems across the state, and it covers 140 counties. It is the lifeblood of 281 libraries and service outlets. Together, participating PINES facilities offer citizens a shared catalog of more than 10 million items that can be accessed by a single library card that is welcomed by all.

McKinney pointed out that this year’s PINES User Satisfaction Survey delivered the program’s highest-ever satisfaction ratings. Better than 19 out of 20 respondents (95.6 percent) would recommend the PINES system to friends, with more than four out of five respondents (82.9 percent) using the catalog at least weekly to renew books online, place holds on books, determine fines or see what items they have checked out.

"As we reach the 10-year mark and see how the service has grown, it is gratifying to take a look back at some of the moments that helped define PINES," McKinney said. “PINES provided the first statewide library card in the world with a single bibliographic and patron database. We’ve gone from lending approximately 6,000 items in FY 2000 to nearly 600,000 in FY 2009, and we have shown the world a new model for cost savings through PINES' economy of scale.”

In 2004, PINES was officially designated an “elite cataloging group” by the Online Computer Library Center. In 2007, it received a $50,000 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration in recognition of the development and release of the Evergreen open-source library automation system. And in May of this year, the PINES community co-hosted the inaugural Evergreen International Conference with 155 attendees from around the world.

“It is with great pride that we celebrate these milestones from our first decade with the millions of users who have either been with PINES since the beginning or who have joined when they were given the opportunity," said State Librarian Dr. Lamar Veatch.

To commemorate the start of PINES’ second decade, Georgia Public Library Service will introduce a new PINES logo this month. A variety of PINES-related events will take place during 2010, with the official birthday celebration set to coincide with the PINES annual meeting in Warner Robins on May 15.

A complete list of participating libraries and service outlets, along with the full PINES catalog, is available from workstations within all Georgia public libraries, as well as for users logging in from home, at gapines.org.

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National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony to Be Broadcast Nationally For the First Time on Public Television Beginning December 4th

/PRNewswire/ -- The National Park Service and the National Park Foundation announced today public television stations nationwide will broadcast the 2009 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony across the country for the first time. In partnership with WETA, Washington, D.C.'s flagship public broadcasting station, public television stations will begin airing the 60-minute lighting ceremony on Friday, December 4th and continue throughout the holiday season. Viewers are invited to check their local public station schedules for exact broadcast dates and times.

In addition, the public will be able to view the lighting ceremony live, as it happens, on Thursday, December 3rd at 5:00 p.m. EST/2:00 p.m. PST at www.thenationaltree.org. The public is also invited to visit the interactive site now and throughout the holiday season to experience all the behind-the-scenes festivities of the event from the story of the first National Christmas Tree to the one-of-a-kind ornaments made each year by ordinary Americans to hang on 56 trees -- one for every U.S. state, territory and the District of Columbia. Visitors to the site may also create their own customized, interactive e-card for the holidays.

A first-time lottery for free tickets to the ceremony saw approximately 37,000 people submit their names for a chance to attend the tree lighting. Celebrity performers who will help celebrate at the ceremony will be announced next week.

The National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony is presented by the National Park Foundation and National Park Service. Alex Coletti Productions will produce the 2009 ceremony. Other supporters include General Electric, Guest Services Inc., Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Washington, D.C., Hudler Carolina Tree Farms, the W Hotel Washington, and the Willard InterContinental Washington, D.C. For more information visit www.thenationaltree.org.

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