Brown Community Health Scholars Named

Scholarship to Address Health Disparities in Baltimore

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has named three doctoral candidates as the inaugural recipients of the C. Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown Community Health Scholarship. The scholarship provides tuition, a living stipend for up to five years of study and a research award of $15,000.

The Brown Community Health Scholarship was established by philanthropists C. Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown to train leaders committed to eliminating health disparities in Baltimore. Sylvia Brown has served on the Bloomberg School’s Health Advisory Board since 2004. Eddie Brown is the founder of Brown Capital Management. The School especially encourages applications from minority candidates and individuals with a demonstrated commitment to Baltimore.

“The Browns have a clear vision for addressing the health needs of Baltimore,” said Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If we want to improve the health of the people living in East Baltimore and similar communities nationwide, we need approaches that impact the problems at the community level. The Brown Scholars Program is designed to do just that.”

2007 Brown Scholars

Stephanie Farquhar comes to the Bloomberg School from Dallas, Texas. She plans to study the public health impact of Baltimore’s new 80-acre Biotech Park. The project, planned for East Baltimore, is heralded as a model community revitalization project. Farquhar will examine the project’s impact on the education and health levels on East Baltimore residents.

Chandra Jackson, originally from Atlanta, Ga., wants to focus on health disparities associated with chronic diseases, such as obesity and type-2 diabetes. Jackson was previously involved in efforts to reduce health disparities in Baltimore as a participant in the Bloomberg School’s Minority Summer Internship Program. She assisted in research projects designed to promote healthy diets and physical activity for minorities living in public housing.

Amanda Latimore, of Santa Monica, Calif., intends to focus on social epidemiology with the goal of reducing HIV, syphilis and other diseases transmitted among Baltimore’s marginalized populations. Latimore says she knew from the age of 10 that she wanted to help children stay healthy when their parents could no longer be there for them. She says her most significant achievements have been those moments in her life when she was able to aid a child or a battered woman.

Also read a Q&A with with Sylvia and Eddie Brown