Healthcare Georgia Foundation to Fund Lectureship on Disparities at Georgia State in Honor of Marshall Kreuter and Martha Katz
Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) July 19, 2013 -- Healthcare Georgia Foundation will fund an annual lectureship focusing on health equity and disparities at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health in honor of Marshall Kreuter and Martha Katz.
“We are thrilled to receive support from Healthcare Georgia Foundation and excited that the lectureship series will honor the careers of Dr. Marshall Kreuter and Martha Katz whose leadership has been key to the growth of public health around the world, and especially at Georgia State,” said Michael P. Eriksen, founding dean of the School of Public Health. “Their legacy of contributions to better health and healthcare for underserved individuals and communities will live on at Georgia State for years to come.”
The $60,000 grant is one of the largest among Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s second quarter awards to nonprofit health organizations and programs throughout Georgia. The Georgia State School of Public Health and its Center of Excellence on Health Disparities, which hosted its first Urban Health Disparities Summit this year, brings together national leaders and experts to address disparities in health outcomes due to race, gender, age, place and socioeconomic status.
“At the intersection of issues of social justice, effective health policy, and evidence-based programs that improve the health of Georgians, one will find the inspirational leadership of Kreuter and Katz,” said Healthcare Georgia Foundation President Dr. Gary D. Nelson.
Kreuter has extensive experience in engagement of communities in the planning, implementation and evaluation of public health programs. As a professor at Georgia State, he was the principal investigator on two community-based participatory research projects focused on health disparities in inner-city Atlanta. He has also conducted innovative research and published on the extent to which the presence or absence of social capital may be associated with the effectiveness of community-based health improvement initiatives.
Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia State, Kreuter was a Distinguished Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where, for two decades, he served in several key leadership roles. While at the CDC, he worked to refine the epidemiologic study of physical activity, initiated research and programs focused on the early detection of breast cancer, added a greater emphasis on school health and created the Planned Approach to Community Health. With his colleague, Lawrence Green, Kreuter is co-author of an internationally recognized textbook on health promotion planning.
Katz began her career in public health working in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she was responsible for developing the first Healthy People report, published in 1980. She later was the deputy director for policy and legislation at the CDC, where she was a member of the agency’s senior executive management team overseeing the CDC’s 8,000 employees and $7.5 billion annual budget.
In addition to advising the CDC’s director on complex policy and legislative aspects of the agency’s public health activities, Katz’s specific responsibilities included leading and coordinating the CDC’s legislative initiatives, health communications programs and relationships with external partners. She also served as Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s Director of Health Policy where she provided leadership in the strategic deployment of resources for effective health policy.
The School of Public Health is the first new degree-granting college at Georgia State in nearly two decades and one of the largest accredited public health programs in the Southeast. The only public university in Atlanta with a School of Public Health, Georgia State distinguishes itself in areas such as urban health disparities, chronic diseases and determinants, and violence prevention. To learn more about the School of Public Health, visit http://publichealth.gsu.edu.
Healthcare Georgia Foundation is a statewide, private independent foundation. The foundation’s mission is to advance the health of all Georgians and to expand access to affordable, quality healthcare for underserved individuals and communities. For more on its second quarter grant awards, click here.
Frances Marine, J.D., Georgia State University, 404-413-1504, [email protected]
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