South Carolina and North Carolina have many things in common: southern heritage, a love of good food and family, beautiful beaches and mountains. The two states also share burdensome health issues like unacceptably high rates of diabetes, stroke, obesity, heart disease, and health disparities.
Now, the Carolinas have a new commonality: a first-in-the-nation, dual state health collaborative made possible by a $15.3 million grant to Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) awarded by The Duke Endowment, a private foundation based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Three of the major research universities and health systems in North Carolina will now partner with those in South Carolina to share information, methods, tools, opportunities and expertise with the goal of improving health and healthcare for the populations of those states and beyond.”
— Iain Sanderson, BM, BCh, Vice Dean for Research Informatics, Duke University School of Medicine
HSSC was established in 2004 by leaders of South Carolina’s largest research universities and health systems who shared the vision of improving health through research. As a result of The Duke Endowment grant, HSSC is collaborating with the health systems and medical schools of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC), Duke University, and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in efforts to build upon the infrastructure and enable the use of data to improve health in both states.