The Deputy Director of the Office of Minority Health, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Pamela Gentry, visited UNLV College of Engineering (COE) and Center for Health Disparities Research(CHDR) at School of Public Health (SPH) in July 2024.

Gentry received an update on a CMS-supported project, “Ethnic-Specific Opioid Risk Prediction in Primary Care Using Deep Learning”, led by three CHDR researchers: PI-Mingon Kang, COE; co-PIs Jay Shen (SPH) and Ji Yoo (School of Medicine). The project focuses on the application of AI/machine learning approaches to track and predict opioid overdose across racial/ethnic populations in five states that have high numbers of overdose rates, including Nevada.

Gentry also participated in a round table discussion with researchers from the UNLV School of Public Health and the UNLV College of Engineering Department of Computer Science, held at CHDR. The meeting participants reviewed ongoing health disparity research projects funded by the CMS and other funding sources. They also discussed disparities regarding Medicaid across states, CMS health equity priorities, Medicare data access, privacy security concerns of accessing publicly available healthcare data, and trends in using information technologies in healthcare.

The researchers also shared some future health disparities research ideas.