The new research effort, called the UW Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR), launched in April. As its name implies, center investigators will focus on how physical environment and social conditions intersect to influence an individual’s health. Researchers will aim to identify new therapies, precision medicine approaches and other interventions,

“UW–Madison is deeply committed to advancing research towards the elimination of health disparities,” she said. “To do this, we need to understand why disparities happen — get to the roots of their mechanisms.”

An initial centerpiece of the center is The Neighborhood Atlas, which Kind developed in 2018 to examine the health impacts of physical and social environment to the neighborhood level. To date, the Atlas has been accessed more than 250,000 times. The data have been used by health systems, policy makers, researchers, and industry leaders to guide real world decisions, including the targeting of COVID-19 vaccination allocations across a number of states as a means to mitigate disparities, Kind said.

The center’s primary offices will be located at University Hospital in Madison, but it is organizationally housed in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. The center will also be led by Barbara Bendlin, PhD, deputy director and professor of medicine, and Andrea Gilmore- Bykovskyi, PhD, RN, deputy director, and assistant professor at the UW–Madison School of Nursing.