UB’s health equity efforts get $500,000 boost

Dr. Timothy Murphy is director of University at Buffalo’s Community Health Equity Research Institute, launched in 2019 to conduct research that addresses the root causes of the region’s health disparities.

Vicki Murphy, a UB School of Nursing graduate, is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who has been working with the region’s children and adolescents for almost three decades, seeing the need for mental health support for area kids and their families.

The husband and wife recently provided a $500,000 gift to UB, which will fund pilot studies in the Community Health Equity Research Institute, as well as scholarship opportunities in mental health nursing in the School of Nursing.

Those funds will go into the endowment, which will gain interest while seeking additional contributions from other donors. Then, the pilot studies and scholarships will be supported by the endowment’s earnings each year.

To start, $100,000 of the money will be spent in the first year, which just started. The plan is for $75,000 of the initial funds to be spent on pilot studies, and $25,000 to go toward scholarships.

The scholarships will go to nurse practitioner students focused on mental health, with the condition they work in a Buffalo community in need. 

“Our region has a serious shortage of mental health care for children,” Vicki Murphy said. “Nurse practitioners play an especially important role in working with children and families with mental health needs. The underserved communities in Buffalo are disproportionately impacted by this shortage.”

And while the Community Health Equity Research Institute already works with faculty from all 12 UB schools, the funds from the Murphys also are geared toward enticing more UB experts to do health disparities research. 

“An important goal of our institute is to develop innovative solutions to reduce health disparities and test those interventions to determine which ones…