Opinion: Health equity research is important for improving lives
Research on health equity issues—such as identifying families in communities most affected by housing and food insecurity—is key to improving health, according to Logan Beyer, MD/PhD candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
In an April 15 opinion piece in STAT News, Beyer wrote that the National Institutes of Health terminated funding for her research on housing and food insecurity, based on reasoning that the research is “antithetical to the scientific inquiry” and does not improve health or reduce disease. However, Beyer wrote, children with limited access to nutritious food are at risk of developing obesity and cardiovascular disease, and better understanding the issue could help inform policies to address it.
“Health equity research is a rigorous field of science, dedicated to identifying cost-effective interventions to improve health outcomes for those least served by our current system,” she wrote.
Read the STAT News op-ed:
The NIH called my health equity research ‘antithetical to scientific inquiry’
