SC historically Black university receives grant for medical equity | Columbia News

ORANGEBURG — South Carolina State University, a historically Black public university in Orangeburg, received a $200,000 grant from Aflac to expand its research centers and bring greater equity to medical fields.

The grant, which the university received Oct. 24, will be split between two centers that research health inequities, provide the surrounding community with resources and funnel their diverse undergraduates into health professions. 

South Carolina State will put the funding toward its Health Equity Research and Training Center and South Carolina Cancer Disparities Research Center. These centers will use $100,000 each from the grant to pay for student scholarships, provide researchers with mini-grants and enhance their services.

The university has already given out five $5,000 scholarships to students planning to work in the centers, including Alexis Day, a junior at S.C. State who wants to pursue obstetrics and gynecology.

“This scholarship allows me to prioritize my education and take avenues that I haven’t been able to, such as the cancer research center this summer,” she said.

The $20,000 mini-research grants which are part of this funding, three from each center, aren’t enough to finance complete projects, said Judith Salley, South Carolina Cancer Disparities Research Center co-director, but they are enough to gather preliminary research that could help the faculty apply for larger grants or expand existing studies. The funds must be used in research that brings together the university and a community partner.

“We do a lot studying and targeting community populations,” Salley said. “But we’re not so good at going back and sharing the results of the research with them. So having them on as research partners gives us that leeway.”

The grant came to the university from Aflac as the last grant of the insurance company’s $1 million CareGrant program, a giveaway to individuals struggling with debt and organizations improving medical outcomes. Aflac said it prioritized areas like South Carolina that have a higher rate of medical debt than the overall country.