"He that gathereth in SUMMER is a wise son” Proverbs 10:5 KJV

The goal of the Shaw University M-RISP Minority Elderly Research (SUMMER) Center is to establish infrastructure support to Shaw University junior-level faculty to conduct health services research on racial disparities among various minority populations by providing training, resources, and mentorship opportunities through collaborative linkages with senior researchers at Shaw and other universities. The Center combines on-going quality health services research, faculty development, and student training in an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to meet the broad objectives of AHRQ M-RISP which are, in part, to help minority institutions and their faculty conduct health services research with respect to the elimination of racial health disparities and to support improvements in health outcomes, strengthen quality measurement and improvement, identify strategies to improve access, foster appropriate use overall, and reduce unnecessary expenditures.

1. to establish institutional infrastructure support for research development to strengthen and enhance the capability of Shaw faculty members to undertake health services research; and
2. to support individual investigator research projects focused on the elimination of health disparities which will, in turn, lead to increases in health knowledge and will form the basis for Shaw faculty to become more competitive in extramural research.

The pilot research projects for the Center are

1. Out-migration, retirement, and death of elderly African American physicians,
2. Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
3. Incontinence and Pressure Ulcers.

SUMMER Center will become a leading minority health research center focusing on racial disparities, utilization of health services, and the long-term care of urban and rural minority elders, particularly in the South.