Reducing disparities in mental health care: suggestions from the Dartmouth-Howard collaboration

This article presents recent collaborative efforts between the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center and Howard University to understand (and ultimately reduce) disparities in mental health care among African Americans. Researchers from Dartmouth and Howard recently formalized a longstanding collaboration through the support of a grant aimed at understanding recovery and rehabilitation for African Americans with severe mental illness. Grant-sponsored efforts have included two seminars between multi-disciplinary mental health researchers and clinicians to inform the implementation of a collaborative research and training program. This article outlines the prominent themes arising from these seminars on the issue of health disparities agreed upon by our multi-disciplinary research team. These are (1) situating disparity research in the context of social justice; (2) understanding trends in disparities; (3) promoting a sophisticated understanding of 'culture' and its role in disparities; (4) critically assessing strategies that attempt to mitigate disparities; (5) developing a reflexive research agenda.