The American Medical Women’s Association affirms our commitment to advancing health equity and ensuring all patients have access to quality, evidence-based care. As healthcare rapidly evolves—with innovations in precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and data-driven care—it is essential that these advances benefit everyone. Addressing health disparities is essential for timely diagnosis and treatment. We are proud to partner with the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), a leader in advancing research to improve the health of every person.
The American Medical Women’s Association affirms our commitment to advancing health equity and ensuring all patients have access to quality, evidence-based care. As healthcare rapidly evolves—with innovations in precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and data-driven care—it is essential that these advances benefit everyone. Addressing health disparities is essential for timely diagnosis and treatment. We are proud to partner with the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), a leader in advancing research to improve the health of every person.
In honor of National Minority Health Month, AMWA Executive Director, Eliza Chin, MD, MPH, invited NIMHD Deputy Director Monica Webb Hooper, PhD, to share key insights about the drivers of health disparities, emerging research opportunities, and practical ways clinicians can help close the gaps in care.
1. Can you briefly describe the mission of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and why its work is so critical at this moment in healthcare?
The central mission of NIMHD is to advance scientific knowledge and improve the health of National Institutes of Health (NIH)–designated populations experiencing health disparities in the United States, with the overarching goals of closing the gaps and improving overall population health.
Its work is especially important right now because healthcare is changing so quickly. We’re seeing major advances in areas such as precision medicine, AI, telehealth, and data-driven care, and it is critical that with these new innovations, everyone can benefit. It also matters because the last several years have made clear that good healthcare is about more than having effective treatments on paper. It’s about whether people, especially those with less access to high-quality care, are diagnosed earlier, stay engaged in care, and see better long-term outcomes. NIMHD supports the kind of research that connects discovery to real-world impact, and that makes its role incredibly timely in this moment.
2. We often hear the term “health disparities,” but the drivers can be complex. From NIMHD’s perspective, what are some of the most important factors contributing to disparities today?
It is helpful to begin with a precise, empirically grounded definition. A health disparity is a largely preventable and measurable difference in health that exists between specific population groups. That definition is a scientific starting point. It identifies where health outcomes differ, but it does not assume a single explanation for why.
Some of the biggest drivers are the way healthcare is organized and how consistently people can access it over time. This includes things like access to high-quality primary and specialty care, and whether patients can move smoothly from screening to diagnosis to treatment and follow-up. When those pieces are harder to navigate, outcomes can diverge pretty quickly.
The complexity is also driven by individual, interpersonal, and community factors. Health disparities are associated with health behaviors such as exercise and nutrition, substance use, and regular medical check-ups. Interpersonal factors like family functioning and the household environment, as well as the patient-clinician relationship, are also important. And then there are community factors outside of one’s control such as the distance to healthcare services and environmental pollutants. The science of health disparities helps identify and understand how these and other modifiable drivers contribute to differences in health outcomes, with an eye towards solutions.
3. Are there emerging areas of research that you believe hold promise for reducing health disparities?
Several areas of research stand out because they help us understand health outcomes in more precise and practical ways. One area I find especially promising is research on how everyday exposures and experiences get “under the skin” and influence disease risk over time. That includes work on physiological stress processes such as inflammation, cortisol regulation, autonomic function, and allostatic load, as well as markers like telomere length. These lines of research are helping us better understand how factors like chronic stress, poor sleep, and environmental exposures can shape outcomes in areas like cardiovascular disease, maternal health, diabetes, and cognitive aging. What makes this so important is that many of these pathways are potentially modifiable.
I also think there is real momentum in emerging clinical and data science approaches. Better use of electronic health records, wearable and remote monitoring data, and more refined risk prediction tools can help identify who may be on a higher-risk trajectory much earlier. When those tools are paired with strong clinical research and implementation science, they can support earlier intervention, follow-up, and more personalized prevention strategies. To me, that combination, understanding the biology of stress and exposure, while improving how we detect and respond in clinical settings, is one of the most promising directions right now.
4. Many physicians care deeply about health equity but may not know how to get involved in research or programs addressing disparities. What are some ways clinicians can engage with NIMHD initiatives?
There are important roles for clinicians in health disparities science. One of the best ways clinicians can engage is by starting with the patient care questions they already see every day. If you notice patterns in screening, follow-up, medication adherence, maternal outcomes, diabetes control, or cancer care, those can become the basis for meaningful research. NIMHD supports work that is very practical and clinically grounded, so physicians can contribute by partnering with investigators at their institution, joining multisite studies, or helping turn quality-improvement questions into formal research. Clinicians can also contribute to clinical trial participation efforts by supporting enrollment, retention, protocol compliance, and patient or participant satisfaction.
Another important path is to connect with NIMHD-funded centers, pilot programs, and implementation science projects. Clinicians can lead grants, or they can serve as collaborators, site investigators, or advisors who help shape study design, recruitment, clinical workflows, and outcome measures. There is also a growing role for physicians in data-driven work, including the use of EHR data, remote monitoring, and predictive tools to identify patients earlier and evaluate what interventions are working in real-world settings.
And finally, mentorship matters. Physicians can encourage trainees and junior faculty members to pursue this work, participate in workshops and funding opportunities, and help build research questions directly from clinical practice. In my view, that is where some of the strongest NIMHD partnerships begin: with clinicians who want to improve outcomes and are willing to bring their frontline experience into the research process.
5. What advice would you give to trainees—particularly those from populations experiencing health disparities—who are interested in careers focused on health disparities?
My advice would be to start by building a very strong foundation in a specific area of science or clinical research. Whether your interest is epidemiology, behavioral science, implementation research, data science, or patient-centered outcomes, the most effective careers in this space are grounded in rigorous methods. It helps to focus on a concrete question, such as improving hypertension control, cancer screening follow-up, maternal outcomes, or medication adherence, and then develop the tools to study it well.
For trainees building a path in this area, one of the most important things is to seek out strong training opportunities early. The key is to find mentors who will invest in your development, include you in meaningful projects, and help you build a track record of publications, presentations, and grants. NIMHD and other NIH Institutes and Centers support training and career development opportunities through various funding opportunities and there are also training programs available within the NIH intramural research program. NIMHD offers the annual Health Disparities Research Institute, our flagship training program, which supports early-career investigators, provides advice on grant writing, and connects them to NIH program directors.
6. Are there areas of women’s health where you believe disparities research is especially urgent right now?
Yes. Maternal health remains one of the most urgent areas, especially around severe maternal morbidity, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, hemorrhage, postpartum complications, and the transition from pregnancy to long-term care. Pregnancy often reveals underlying cardiometabolic risk, so there is a real opportunity to use that period to improve obstetric outcomes, as well as identify women who may be at higher risk for future cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or kidney disease and intervene earlier.
Beyond maternal health, I think several areas stand out. Cardiovascular disease in women is a major one, particularly because risk can present differently and may be underrecognized earlier in life. I would also point to breast and gynecologic cancers, where differences in screening, tumor biology, treatment response, and survivorship remain important research priorities. Conditions like uterine fibroids, endometriosis, menopause, chronic pain, depression, and cognitive aging deserve much more attention because they affect quality of life, functional status, and long-term health in very significant ways.
What is especially promising right now is the ability to connect these questions with better clinical and data science tools, earlier risk prediction, remote monitoring, longitudinal EHR data, and more precise follow-up strategies. That gives us a chance to move from simply documenting differences in outcomes to identifying earlier, more actionable points for prevention and treatment across the full course of women’s health.
7. NIMHD has a wealth of resources. Can you highlight a few that might be particularly relevant to our members in research or clinical practice?
For members interested in research, I would highlight three things.
- We have a resource called HDPulse that can be a useful starting point for understanding population-level trends critical to identifying and understanding minority health, health disparities, and population health, as well as examining some of the determinants or factors that contribute to them, at the national, state, and county levels. HDPulse also has an interventions portal, which is a repository of interventions and resources that support dissemination, adaptation, replication, and implementation work.
- The Science Collaborative for Health and Artificial Intelligence Reduction of Errors (SCHARE) resource. SCHARE is a cloud-based platform that uses population science datasets and data science tools to support health disparities and health outcomes research. It offers rich datasets, secure collaborative workspaces, and monthly “Think—Thons” to better understand AI and cloud computing terminology, as well as to develop relevant research questions and projects.
- The PhenX Toolkit’s Demographics and Social Determinants of Health Collection. This is an online resource that provides standard data collection protocols to make it easier to select measures for use in research and to help with comparing, sharing, and combining data from different studies. A few examples of the validated measures include those for annual family income, occupational prestige, and race and/or ethnicity.
8. AMWA is committed to advancing women’s health and leadership in medicine. Where do you see opportunities for organizations like ours to partner with NIMHD to advance health for all?
There are strong possibilities for partnership. The first is research and clinician engagement. AMWA brings together physicians across specialties and career stages, so the organization could be a powerful partner in helping members connect with NIMHD-funded investigators, centers, and training programs. That could include webinars, mentorship networks, grant education, and practical guidance for clinicians who want to turn questions from patient care into research projects.
The second is women’s health research itself, especially in areas where better evidence could have a real clinical impact, such as maternal health, cardiovascular disease in women, cancer screening and survivorship, chronic pain, mental health, aging, and cardiometabolic risk across the life course. AMWA can help surface high-priority questions from frontline practice, and NIMHD can help support the science, methods, and collaborative infrastructure needed to study them well.
And finally, I think there is a major opportunity in dissemination and implementation. AMWA has a strong platform for reaching physicians, trainees, and leaders in medicine. Partnering with NIMHD to share evidence-based approaches, highlight successful models of care, and support multisite clinical and data-driven projects could help move good research more quickly into everyday practice. That kind of partnership would be valuable for both science and patient outcomes.
Join us to bridge science and practice—so that improved outcomes and equitable care become a reality for all patients.