The Black Biomedical Research Movement was formed for the purpose of eliminating our nation's severe health disparity and increasing the pool of minority researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Our two-fold mission is:
- To improve health outcomes by aggressively raising health consciousness in Black Americans; and
- To increase African American involvement in all facets of National Institutes of Health (NIH) and similarly funded biomedical research projects affecting the health of Black peoples.
BBRM takes a modern, multidisciplinary and proactive approach to solving the myriad health crises affecting the Black community. Our hallmark, and what sets BBRM apart from other organizations with similar goals, is our unique capacity to reach a wide cross-section of Black youth through a nontraditional approach to health education involving culturally relevant "edutainment".
Our innovative marketing strategies are linked to popular, youth-oriented events such as professional sports, comedy, dance and music, including reggae, hip-hop and rhythm and blues. The BBRM Cultural Health Symposia are potent social catalysts for both personal and community health-enhancing changes in attitude and behavior. Our unique ethnically-appropriate health education strategies have a profound impact on transforming the health-related attitudes and practices of Black people. Our philosophy is that only by empowering cultural groups with concrete knowledge and effective tools for behavioral change that are relevant to their own lives will the huge ethnic and economic disparities in health in the United States disappear.
The primary goals of the BBRM are to:
- Improve health attitudes, knowledge, and behavior in African Americans, especially Black young adults, with area-specific designs to efficiently deliver relevant high-impacting health messages to the people in that area.
- Develop original and inspiring, culturally-relevant health education materials for people attending our health workshops, symposia, and tutorial programs.
- Increase the participation of Black people in biomedical research in the United States by recruiting top-level Black college students in the sciences, and procuring sufficient sources of funding for their graduate training in biomedical programs at major universities.
- Increase the participation of African Americans involved in all levels of biomedical research, including participation as research subjects and become advocates for more federal dollars for biomedical research.