Dexter’s focus is on chronic disease health disparities and prevention, particularly among African American and Latino populations, with a particular emphasis on community-based participatory research, equitable evaluation and inclusion. Joining the KDHRC team as a Project Operations Manager further extended his experiences with unique diseases and public health concerns. Dexter manages several projects and works closely with project and community partners to address a host of public health-related concerns. He enjoys meeting and collaborating with new project partners, strategizing with KDHRC staff to identify best ways to evaluate projects, and envisioning how the projects can impact and improve public health outcomes. Dexter’s projects include:
- Intervention to Help Orient Men to Excel (IN HOME) is a NIH-funded and KDHRC-developed online training to prepare community health workers (CHWs) to conduct outreach to reduce caregiver burden for African American and Latino male informal caregivers of older adults. (Role – PI)
- Guardians Receiving Information through Navigators (GRIN) is a NIH-funded and KDHRC-developed online professional development course that aims to prepare CHWs to provide oral health outreach to low-income Black guardians of children and adolescents. (Role – PI)
- Cardiac Rare Disease And Conditions (CARDIAC), a training program to increase non-cardiologist and general cardiologist providers’ knowledge about a rare cardiovascular illness, transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) that disproportionately affects African Americans. The project was funded by Pfizer Global Medical Grants and developed by KDHRC (Role – Project Manager)
- The American College of Rheumatology’s Collaborative Initiatives (COIN) subcontracted with KDHRC on a suite of CDC projects to develop programs to increase awareness, knowledge and self-efficacy to recognize the signs and symptoms of lupus, increase awareness of lupus clinical trials, or increase the awareness of transitioning from adolescent to adult lupus care in different settings to address lupus disparities among racial/ethnic groups. (Role – Project Management)
- Project CHANGE is a 3-year Lupus Therapeutics and Lupus Research Alliance funded project to increase knowledge, equitable, and supported clinical trial participation and retention among African American/Black persons living with lupus in the U.S. KDHRC will perform focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and town hall meetings. (Role – project management, key point of contact with project team, research, program development, and member of the Steering Committee and the Technical Assistance Workgroup)
- Maryland CHW Training Project, funded by the Maryland Health Department via funding from the CDC, will develop community health worker (CHW) trainings to address health disparities within the communities they serve in five specialty topic areas. Central Maryland AHEC subcontracted KDHRC to collaborate with subject matter expert groups to create content for three specialty topic areas Behavioral Health; Chronic Disease Management: Asthma; and Maternal and Child Health to include structured curricula and a student’s guide. (Role – project management)
