Tulane will recruit and train community health workers to implement a comprehensive health and lifestyle coaching program for congregants in predominantly African American churches in New Orleans and Bogalusa, Louisiana, to help eliminate cardiovascular health disparities among African Americans. This work will be funded by a $8.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The program will focus on healthy eating, exercise, weight loss, improving cholesterol numbers, addressing high blood pressure and controlling other risk factors.

“I completely understand the mistrust. But you have to consider the risk of COVID versus the risk of the vaccine. This is a devastating disease and it has disproportionately impacted Black Americans. That is what we do know.”

Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, written by Andy Horowitz, an assistant professor of history at the School of Liberal Arts, was named the Humanities Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values Walter Isaacson wrote the cover story, “The Vaccine Revolution,” for TIME Magazine’s Jan. 18 issue. In his story, Isaacson writes about his experience being in a clinical trial for the COVID-19 vaccine, how the COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were developed and the role of mRNA. “The plague year of 2020 will be remembered as the time when these traditional vaccines were supplanted by something fundamentally new: genetic vaccines, which deliver a gene or piece of genetic code into human cells,” he wrote.

Gary “Hoov” Hoover, scholar and nationally renowned economist in the study of economic policy and its impact on wealth and income inequality, is the new director of Tulane’s Murphy Institute and full professor in economics. Hoover, who stepped into his role as director in January, said at the time of his appointment, “The opportunity to have discussions about the most challenging economic, moral and political problems of our time is an honor that I cannot 
wait to begin.”