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Equity is our race, culture, ethnicity, and identity blog. The blog focuses on coverage important to Illinois and its improvement. Evidence of performance of public policies and their impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of equity and diversity:Maureen Foertsch McKinney and Rachel Otwell curate this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.

Equity: Fund Us, Say UIS Profs Looking At Hepatitis C In Homeless People

UIS
Professor Kanwal Alvarez

University of Illinois Springfield researchers are taking an unusual tack at getting funds to do research. They have created a crowdfunding account to pay for testing kits. They plan to investigate hepatitis c in homeless people in central Illinois.

UIS professors Kanwal Alvarez and Josiah Alamu need to raise at least $500 and hope to get $2,000.

Alvarez says UIS researchers have not used the fundraising method previously.

For now, the pair plans to test members of homeless populations in Bloomington, Champaign, Decatur, Peoria and Springfield to find out how many people have the virus and to study its transmission. The professors are also working with Dr. Janak Koirala, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. Students will be involved as well.

Homeless people are one of the populations most likely to have hepatitis c, which is fatal at a rate greater than HIV if not treated.

Those wishing to make a donation can go to http://go.uis.edu/homeless.

Maureen Foertsch McKinney is news editor and equity and justice beat reporter for NPR Illinois, where she has been on the staff since 2014 after Illinois Issues magazine’s merger with the station. She joined the magazine’s staff in 1998 as projects editor and became managing editor in 2003. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois Springfield, she was an education reporter and copy editor at three local newspapers, including the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s degree in English from UIS.
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