NEWS

Lecture to highlight hot topic in health care: cultural competence

CHAPEL HILL -- Dr. Nilda Peragallo, a leading researcher and advocate for culturally competent HIV-AIDS prevention education among Hispanics in the United States, will discuss cultural competence in health-care education, research and service at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday (Jan. 23).

Her lecture, "Connecting the Dots: My Life and Times as a Nurse Researcher in Latino Communities," will focus on her efforts to build sustainable, culturally cognizant relationships with ethnic and minority underserved populations. The event is free to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. in the lobby-level auditorium of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building.

Peragallo’s lecture is a part of the UNC School of Nursing Ethnic Minority Visiting Scholars Program, established to highlight the research and contributions of ethnic minority nurse-scholars.

"Disparity in the care of ethnic and minority populations is a serious problem in health care today," said Dr. Linda Beeber, a nursing professor and co-chair of the Ethnic Minority Visiting Scholars Program.

"Statistics show that minorities receive poorer health care for a variety of life-threatening diseases such as heart disease, stroke, HIV-AIDS, mental illness and cancer. We must teach all current and future health-care workers to be proficient with people of all cultures and ethnicities. This is especially relevant in light of the fact that North Carolina’s Hispanic population rose nearly 400 percent over the past decade."

Peragallo is an associate professor and director of the Pan-American Health Organization-World Health Organization Collaborating Education and Practice Center at the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Nursing.

She is well-known in the international health education and research arenas. Peragallo is a founding leader of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses and is editor of Hispanic Health Care International. She has served as a grant proposal reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, the National Minority AIDS Council and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Infectious Diseases.

Peragallo will lead a question-and-answer session with a group of Hispanic mothers who participate in the Early Head Start Program at 9 a.m. Thursday (Jan. 23) at El Centro Latino, located at 101 Lloyd St. in Carrboro. The meeting will focus on current health-care issues facing Hispanic women and how they can take charge of their individual and community health care.

The UNC School of Nursing is home to several research programs aimed at better caring for underserved populations. Included is the new Center for Innovation in Health Disparities Research, one of only eight such centers funded in 2002 by the National Institutes of Health.

-30-

School of Nursing contact: Sunny Smith Nelson, (919) 966-1412 or sunny_nelson@unc.edu.