Community Engagement Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT To achieve its primary objective of building trust-based relationships with communities to prioritize and conduct basic biomedical, behavioral and clinical research and to disseminate and implement research findings, the Community Engagement Core (CEC) will work closely with the Research Infrastructure Core, the Investigator Development Core and the leadership and advisors of the RCMI Specialized Center. Relationship building will be facilitated through community-university exchanges, community involvement in research prioritization and proposal review, and capacity-building opportunities for members of community-based organizations (CBO) that serve underrepresented groups, particularly Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders including Filipinos. Specific Aim 1. Nurture trust-based collaborative relationships with communities through capacity building and resource sharing. Plan: Strengthen relationships between university faculty and the extensive network of CBO partners (including local governmental agencies) through capacity-building and resource-sharing activities to improve the health of Native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders including Filipinos, immigrants, and groups marginalized because of their ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual preference or identity, or geographic location. Specific Aim 2. Promote and facilitate community participation in all aspects of health-disparities research. Plan: Foster community participation in conceptualization, design, planning and implementation of research that is relevant to community concerns, and engage CBO in the review of research proposals. Specific Aim 3. Disseminate research findings to the intended communities and service providers. Plan: Create a communications infrastructure to facilitate the rapid dissemination of easily understandable information on health promotion and disease prevention to the intended communities and through culturally appropriate, scientific venues. The proposed CEC action plans are expected to have a significant impact on creating sustainable university partnerships with CBO, on diversifying the “thinkforce”, and on supporting the bidirectional flow of ideas to tackle the root causes of and effective interventions for health disparities.