More than 250 attend third annual Health Equity Summit

Dr. Jerome Adams, executive director of Purdue’s Health Equity Initiatives (HEI), and the university’s Health Equity Initiatives team on Feb. 29 hosted the third annual Health Equity Summit, which featured a poster presentation and a series of speakers, including Dr. Francis S. Collins, a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes.

Collins previously led the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in 2023 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. For 15 years, he served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health before becoming the 16th director of the NIH. Collins oversaw the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world over the course of three presidential administrations and now serves as the White House lead for programming to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States.

This year, over 250 attendees in sectors spanning academia, research, government, industry, health care and beyond took part in the summit, along with student volunteers from Project Icarus — a student organization that aims to improve health care for individuals experiencing homelessness.

HEI collaborated with the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute to host its first poster presentation, which included more than 40 posters representing various labs and research from Purdue, Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. This year’s winners were Luke Brennan, a fourth-year MD-PhD student in biomedical engineering, and Dr. Devon Hori Harvey, a postdoctoral fellow in ophthalmology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Brennan and Harvey each received a $500 travel award sponsored by Indiana CTSI to attend a conference of their choice and present their work.

The speaker lineup included a diverse group of researchers and academic community panelists working to advance health equity through innovation, multisectoral partnerships and policy change at the local, state and national levels.

Ahead of Collins’ keynote presentation, students were able to meet with him during a private dinner made possible through the efforts of Karen Plaut, executive vice president for research, and leaders from the College of Pharmacy, College of Engineering and IU School of Medicine — West Lafayette.

A recording of the summit is now available on the HEI webpage. For more information about joining the HEI faculty work group, contact Brandi Plantenga at bplante@purdue.edu or Aubrey Anderson at adams339@purdue.edu. Follow HEI on LinkedIn for additional updates on its work.