Newsletters > TB Challenge > Summer 2006 > Burns-Grant and Fraser Accept CDC/ATSDR Minority Health Mentor/Champion of Excellence Group Award

TB Challenge: Partnering to Eliminate TB in African Americans

Burns-Grant and Fraser Accept CDC/ATSDR Minority Health Mentor/Champion of Excellence Group Award

H. David Crowder, Team Leader, DTBE/FSEB

Dr. Julie Gerberding, Gail Burns-Grant, and Dr. Mitchell Cohen

On July 13, 2006, Gail Burns-Grant and Michael Fraser, DTBE, Field Services and Evaluation Branch, received the Minority Health Mentor/Champion of Excellence Group Award at the CDC/ATSDR Honor Awards Ceremony. This award was given in recognition of their work to reduce TB in African Americans through the coordination of three highly successful demonstration projects in the states of Georgia and South Carolina and the city of Chicago and for the timely dissemination of lessons learned from these projects.

The work of the staff in the three project areas that Burns-Grant and Fraser coordinated has been critical to the success of the demonstration projects. These project area staff worked successfully with community based organizations and local health departments in targeting interventions to specific community areas, including zip code areas and health districts. Early on, the project staff recognized that it would be important to have community involvement and worked to ensure community representation and inclusion in the planning and implementation of these three projects. Efforts were made to develop active partnerships with the target populations to ensure their needs were met and that the interventions developed were culturally competent and acceptable.

Burns-Grant and Fraser identified the important lessons learned by the project areas and have been featuring them periodically in a quarterly CDC/DTBE publication, The TB Challenge. This newsletter, approaching its third year, is formatted, edited, designed, and distributed by DTBE staff. Through this newsletter, they share strategies, innovative approaches, interventions, and evaluation results that can be translated and applied nationally. They also speak and exhibit at local and national conferences, meetings, and seminars sponsored by internal and external partners to raise awareness and call for community action to reduce historically high rates of TB in the African-American community.

Working closely with project areas engaged in this work, they have made contributions that have had a positive public health impact on reducing TB rates and will help to strengthen the overall health of African Americans nationwide. Gail commented as follows on the award: “We share this award with all of our partners who are committed and dedicated to addressing the historically high rates of TB in the African-American community, for we work with them and through them to advance this work. I am particularly grateful for the latitude we have had-the flexibility that our project areas have been granted by our division to develop, design, and disseminate acceptable messages that were actually created in the community for the community.”

Minority Health Resources

Visit the CDC's Office of Minority Health to view announcements, upcoming conferences, meetings, trainings, reports, publications, and other minority health-related resources.

Contact Us

If you have story ideas or articles to share, or would like to provide comments, please e-mail Gail Burns-Grant at gab2@cdc.gov or call (404) 639-8126.

To add/delete  someone to/from our mailing list, please contact Vivian Siler, Management & Program Analyst, DTBE/FSEB, by e-mail at vas6@cdc.gov or call (404) 639-5319.

Released October 2008
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention
Division of Tuberculosis Elimination - http://www.cdc.gov/tb

Please send comments/suggestions/requests to: hsttbwebteam@cdc.gov, or to
CDC/Division of Tuberculosis Elimination
Communications, Education, and Behavioral Studies Branch
1600 Clifton Rd., NE - Mailstop E-10, Atlanta, GA 30333