Center for Rural Community Health Development

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This proposal is for establishment of a Prevention Research Center(PRC) at the Texas A&M University System(TAMUS) School of Rural Public Health (SRPH). The mission of the proposed PRC, the Center for Rural Community Health Development(CRCHD) is to ork collaboratively with communities and other partners, to translate, evaluate and disseminate effective individual, organizational, community and regional strategiesfor addressing critical and health-related issues in rural and underserved populations. The establishmentof the Center will lead to important outputs including strengthening the research capacity of SRPH--with staff, resources, skills and knowledge,and research infrastructure--and expanding prevention research activities and projects. Anticipated outcomes include strengthening the prevention research workforce through training and research experience; broader dissemination of the community health development model, and expanded community interventions. The research agenda for the CRCHD is organized around three broad themes: (1) factors influencing the translation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of existing prevention knowledge to rural and underserved communities; (2) factors affecting community health development as one approach to the addressing community health issues and the dissemination of prevention knowledge; and (3) contextual factors that affect our ability to disseminate community health development processes and prevention knowledge to other rural and underserved communities. The proposed core research project addresses the first of the Center's three broad themes with its focus on the translation and dissemination of clinical and community guidelines for diabetes prevention and management. The second and third themes will be addressed through study of the community health development process upon which this initiative is based.