June 2021 | Issue 3 | Page 2
Forming a Community and Academic Based Partnership
Authors : Ronit Elk , PhD , Christine Khandelwal , DO , and Karen Bullock , PhD
Dr . Elk : Dr . Christine Khandelwal is a hospice and palliative care physician at Transitions Life in Raleigh , North Carolina . As a physician who focuses on interdisciplinary training , she is always on the lookout for innovative training methods and was particularly interested in finding ways to train her team about ways to treat African American patients respectfully . She had heard about our Center ’ s “ African American Communities Speak to Healthcare Professionals ” training at a presentation Dr . Elk made at the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine presentation and was very interested in training her team .
At the end of April this year , she saw a funding opportunity from Robert Wood Johnson ( RWJ ) that seemed to be a perfect fit for her wish to provide training and also to collaborate with researchers to conduct a study on this training . RWJ ’ s research call was for a grant to support a partnership between three people : two researchers and one community partner . And most important of all , the focus of the grant was on projects that build evidence for solutions to eliminate the structures that perpetuate racial inequities in health .
The deadline was just two weeks away ! But that did not deter Dr . Khandelwal . She moved very fast ! She reached out to Dr . Karen Bullock , the Head of the School of Social Work at N . C . State University , and to Dr . Ronit Elk , of the Center for Palliative and Supportive Care at UAB . And after umpteen zoom cools , emails and sharing of documents , all within this very short time period , a grant
Ronit Elk , PhD
Professor Associate Director , Center for Palliative and Supportive Care and the Southeast Institute for Innovation in Palliative and Supportive Care University of Alabama at Birmingham
was written and a close partnership established between the three team members , Drs . Khandelwal , Bullock and Elk .
We don ’ t know if our grant will be selected , they only select 15 teams from around the country . If we are selected , we ’ ll jump up and down and shout out with joy . If we don ’ t , we ’ ll look for another way to make this partnership work and make this community-based research project happen . ( We ’ ll keep everyone updated .)
Dr . Khandelwal : If there was ever a story to tell about the perfect alignment of dedicated and passionate colleagues working towards the same goals , and yet have never met , this is our story . Dr . Elk , Dr . Bullock and myself have all been searching and following our own different , yet parallel paths , to answer the question : how do we improve and deliver equitable palliative care and hospice services to minority communities ? As a palliative care and hospice physician , this became more evident during the past year of the pandemic when people of color were dying at a higher rate and yet received the lowest rate of hospice and palliative care services within my own practice . I could no longer be still without feeling the need to do more .
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