The NCA&T health disparities research center just became the university’s biggest single NIH win ever. Seven-point-two million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s right now, and most of them want to know their diagnosis before it fully arrives. That statistic sits behind the new $16.9 million NIH award that just landed at North Carolina A&T — the largest single NIH grant the university’s Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences has ever received.
The five-year award comes through the NIH’s Research Centers in Minority Institutions program, run by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. It will fund the brand-new NC A&T health disparities research center, built specifically to tackle disparities that hit Black and other underserved communities hardest. The center will start with brain health.
What the NC A&T health disparities research center actually funds
The new Research Center in Minority Institutions, or RCMI, will live inside the John R. and Kathy R. Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences. Its initial focus lands on brain health research. Two RO1-scale research projects will get direct support — the kind of federally competitive funding researchers spend careers chasing. “This $16.9 million RCMI is the largest single NIH award to the Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences and will be a game changer for team-science driven multidisciplinary health disparities research,” said Elimelda Moige Ongeri, the college’s dean.
Structurally, the RCMI runs on four cores. An Administrative Core oversees the whole operation and runs seminars and symposia. An Investigator Development Core funds seed research and mentors junior faculty, graduate students, and postdocs. A Community Engagement Core carries findings out into underserved communities. That’s meant to change practice, not just publish papers. A Research Capacity Core rounds things out, building the equipment, training, and data infrastructure that makes the other three cores possible.
Brain health, and why A&T was positioned for this
A&T didn’t land this award out of nowhere. The university already runs the Center for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research, known as CIHDER, along with the Center for Outreach in Alzheimer’s, Aging and Community Health, or COAACH. A&T is also a partner in the NC Brain Health Registry. COAACH-affiliated researchers contribute to the Black American United Memory and Aging Project as well. The new RCMI slots directly into that existing infrastructure instead of starting from scratch.
Marc Cook, Ph.D., an associate kinesiology professor and the RCMI’s lead principal investigator, framed the win as validation of years of groundwork. “Our team’s resilience, perseverance and dedication to the communities that we serve is what makes earning this award special for us all,” Cook said. He added that the funding gives the university real capacity to move the needle on these specific disparities. It’s also a direct investment in the people involved — faculty, students, staff, and the communities carrying the burden of these health gaps.
The RCMI will fund a new interdisciplinary research cluster, too, pulling faculty from kinesiology, psychology, sociology, social work, and nanoengineering. That last department is the interesting addition. Researchers there plan to apply emerging nanotechnology directly to brain health research. It’s a pairing that shows how seriously A&T is treating this as a cross-disciplinary effort, not one department’s project. HBCU Buzz has tracked similar investments across its ongoing HBCU research funding coverage.
Part of a bigger funding wave at A&T
This grant didn’t arrive in isolation. A&T recently announced that its researchers secured $113.3 million in research contracts and grants for the fiscal year running from July 2025 through June 2026. That total came from more than 500 submitted proposals alone. Over the past five years, the university has pulled in $556 million in total research awards. The NC A&T health disparities research center becomes the newest piece of that broader growth, and by dollar amount, one of the most visible. Readers can follow more of that momentum through HBCU Buzz’s coverage of HBCU STEM funding.
University leadership framed the award as proof the institution belongs in a bigger research conversation. “Securing an RCMI award is a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to the excellence and competitiveness of N.C. A&T’s research enterprise,” said Andrew P. Daire, provost and executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. A&T already holds the Carnegie Classification’s Community Engagement credential. The school is also working toward Research 1 status, the classification reserved for universities with very high research spending and doctorate production.
Why brain health, and why now
The choice to start with brain health isn’t random. Lisa Clough, Ph.D., vice chancellor for Research, pointed to the scale of the problem directly. Roughly 7.2 million Americans currently live with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. National surveys consistently show that most Americans would rather know their status than not. Black Americans face higher rates of Alzheimer’s and related dementias than white Americans. They also remain underrepresented in the clinical research meant to understand and treat those conditions.
That gap is exactly what this center is built to close. Rather than treating Black communities as an afterthought in national brain health research, the NC A&T health disparities research center puts them at the center of the study design from day one. It recruits participants, trains researchers, and builds infrastructure meant to outlast this single five-year grant cycle.
