In the fall of 2020, the GI community came together to support our inaugural AGA Giving Day. Our goal: generate funds to support state-of-the-art research that will help improve care for all patients suffering from digestive diseases. We know that health care differences resulting from the social determinants of health lead to poorer outcomes. With the funding raised on AGA Giving Day, we selected 10 research projects to advance our understanding of, and alleviate, these inequities in GI health care.
We commend each of our award recipients for doing their part to create a just world free of health disparities in digestive diseases and free of inequities in access and effective health care delivery.
Young-Rock Hong, PhD, MPH, University of Florida
AGA Pilot Research Award in Digestive Disease Health Disparities
Project: Novel social determinants of health assessment tool for early-onset colorectal cancer burden.
Jennifer Flemming, MD, MAS, Queen's University
AGA Pilot Research Award in Health Disparities (Funded by Janssen Biotech, Inc.)
Project: Examining the association between social determinants of health and immigration status with evaluation for and receipt of liver transplantation: A population-based study.
Sonia Kupfer, MD, The University of Chicago
AGA-Merck Pilot Research Award in Colorectal Cancer Health Disparities
Project: Bile acid metabolism and responses in African- and European-Americans.
Andre Paes Batista da Silva, PhD, MS, DDS, Case Western Reserve University
AGA-Pfizer Pilot Research Award in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)
Project: Extra-intestinal vs. extra-oral manifestation: The gut-mouth axis in IBD mouse models.
Zachary Reichenbach, MD, PhD, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University
Project: Investigating the cellular and molecular factors contributing to health disparities in esophageal cancer.
Chung Sang Tse, MD, University of California, San Diego
Project: Characterizing the phenotype of functional diarrhea in ulcerative colitis by clinical, endoscopic, and histologic criteria and examining the role of social determinants of health.
Fellows and students receiving AGA Abstract Awards for Health Disparities Research:
Alan De La Rosa, MD, Mayo Clinic (fellow)
Project: A comparison between real world weight loss outcomes with anti-obesity medications before and during COVID-19 pandemic.
Megan Rose McLeod, MD, MS, BA, UCLA (student)
Project: Decline in colorectal cancer screening rates in federally qualified health centers in the United States between 2019 and 2020.
Kai Wang, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (fellow)
Project: Endoscopic screening and risk of colorectal cancer according to type 2 diabetes status.
Timothy Andrew Zaki, MD, BS, UT Southwestern Medical Center (student)
Project: Racial and ethnic disparities in early-onset colorectal cancer survival.
In 2022, the AGA Research Foundation awarded more than $2.56 million in research funding to 61 investigators. See the full list of awardees.
These awards were made possible through the generosity of supporters of the 2020 AGA Giving Day Campaign to fund health disparities research. Funding for these awards is provided by AGA Research Foundation donors; Amgen Inc.; Bristol Myers Squibb; Janssen Biotech, Inc.; Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.; and Pfizer, Inc.
