Faculty in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences are involved in a multitude of collaborative research projects and events.  Rhonda Dailey, MD, Assistant Professor in the department’s Behavioral Health Division share the following activities she has been involved with recently.

Dr. Dailey is a co-investigator and co-Associate Director of the Community Engagement Core to the newly funded center grant: ACHIEVE GREATER (Addressing Cardiometabolic Health Inequities by Early PreVEntion in the GREATLakEs Region) (PI: Philip Levy). The center grant consists of 3 cores (Administrative, Community Engagement, and Investigator  and 3 research studies that focus on low risk, stage I hypertension, early-stage heart failure, and subclinical coronary artery disease and aims to reduce the overwhelming cardiometabolic health disparities and downstream Black-White lifespan inequality in Detroit, MI and Cleveland, Ohio.  Several colleagues from the DFMPHS are grant co-investigators with leadership roles. More information is here: https://today.wayne.edu/medicine/news/2021/10/06/wayne-state-wins-18-million-from-national-institutes-of-health-to-intercept-chronic-disease-in-black-communities-46285

Dr. Dailey will be the Clinical Coordinator to a new COVID-19 Vaccine Supplement 4 grant, awarded to the Michigan Development Disabilities Institute (MI-DDI) (PI: Sharon Milburger), housed at Wayne State University. The grant, supported by the federal 2021 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act, is funded through the CDC National Center for immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). Dr. Dailey will oversee vaccination dissemination in collaboration with other grantees, universities, and community partners including the Wayne Health Mobile Unit. The goal of the grant is to ensure greater equity and access to COVID-19, COVID-19 boosters, and other vaccinations (Influenza, Chickenpox, etc.) by those disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This project will result in an increase of vaccinated people with disabilities, their family members, and caregivers; people who are homebound or isolated; people with transportation limitations; and people living in communities with a high social vulnerability index. These activities will also improve access to and preparation for other necessary vaccines for underserved individuals.

In addition, she will be a core faculty member for the Center for Health Equity & Community Knowledge in Urban Populations (CHECK-UP) (Director: Dr. Hayley Thompson). CHECK-UP is a finalist to WSU’s Bold Moves Initiative. CHECK-UP’s mission is to establish a nationally and internationally recognized center of excellence in research and programming to eliminate racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other socially-driven health disparities and to achieve health equity. CHECK-UP will bridge the science-society gap and build the capacity of researchers and stakeholders to solve Detroit’s and the region’s most pressing health issues by creating an infrastructure to improve transdisciplinary collaboration and communication among WSU scholars and community stakeholders. More information is here: https://boldmoves.wayne.edu/ideas

Finally, Dr. Dailey, as the Scientific Director of the Office of Community-Engaged Research (OCEnR), has collaborated with curriculum creator, Dr. Vicki T. Sapp (SUNY Fredonia and Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine), and spearheaded diversity and inclusion efforts beginning in 2020 to conduct a virtual and interactive 3-part Implicit Bias workshop series to WSU faculty, staff, and students. By early December 2021, a total of 18, 2-hour a piece workshops were conducted to over 200 School of Medicine faculty and 1,500 medical students. Attendees learned about microaggressions, implicit bias, and the concept of privilege and completed pre- and post assessments. Preliminary results of the assessments have been presented at two national meetings and the 3-part Implicit Bias workshop series will be a part of the mandatory training for the investigators, co-investigators, staff, and community health workers involved in the ACHIEVE GREATER grant.

In addition to her research work, Dr. Dailey’s first-authored manuscript, in collaboration with several research colleagues, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health (In press, December 2021) titled: Beyond Timing and Counting Visits: Assessing Prenatal Care Quality in Black Women in the United States.  She also served as the keynote speaker at the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) Region VIII Leadership Conference, held virtually on  Oct 16, 2021, presenting Excellence in Medical Research: Embracing the Imbalance; and was a panel speaker along with other experts, Drs. Linda Jaber, Otis Brawley, and Phillip Levy, discussing Healthy Women, Healthy Communities: Building a Post-Pandemic Infrastructure for Treating Non-Communicable Diseases at the ACCESS 9^th Annual Arab Health Summit, held virtually on October 21, 2021.