Far too often, as a result of stereotyping, there are striking differences in the healthcare of patients. The multicultural dynamics of New Jersey—fifth in the nation for foreign-born residents, with 1.2 million immigrants and a population that is more than one-third minority—simply demand that our University represent the real world and educate professionals up to the challenge of eliminating health disparities in racial and ethnic groups.

This formula only works when it’s been tested, tried and seasoned with 37 years of experience by a vast number of initiatives and hard work in UMDNJ offices statewide: from Central Administration’s Human Resources and Workplace Diversity departments to SPH’s Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities, the Center for Healthy Families and Cultural Diversity at RWJMS, the Hispanic Center of Excellence at NJMS, the Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in SHRP, and numerous other student, faculty, clinical and administrative efforts bent on changing minds, lives, stereotypes and perceptions. The end result is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,700 students, and one of the most ethnically diverse academic communities in the world.

Homer Adams, III, is typical of the kind of committed scholar-researchers on all of our campuses. A breast cancer researcher who has always loved science, Adams is a PhD student at GSBS who came to Newark in 2004 and is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship, which supports underrepresented minority students and their schools. “I love my work in breast cancer now.” A native of San Antonio, Texas, with a BA from Tuskegee and an MS in reproductive science from Washington State, he once thought he wanted to be a veterinarian. Adams believes that a new generation of scientists is changing the dynamics in labs like his at the NJMS-UH Cancer Center. “The Sloan program is designed to encourage diversity in academia,” he explains.