34th annual Minority Health Conference at UNC Chapel Hill

The minority student caucus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill yesterday hosted the 34th annual Minority Health Conference.  This remarkable student-organized event has a long tradition of presenting research and advocacy on health equity topics.  Some speakers and many attendees, including mid-career experts now highly accomplished in health and medical fields, had roots in the programs at UNC and other universities that organized the conference years or even decades earlier.  The event was much bigger and more lively than I expected. 

Highlights this year included keynote talks by Brian Smedley (from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and co-founder of the Opportunity Agenda) and Leandris Liburd (director of the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity at CDC).

I enjoyed speaking at a breakout session on food economics.  Indeed, food policy issues seemed to arise throughout the conference in conversations and presentations with people from all sorts of health-related fields of study.