ADMINISTRATIVE CORE

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This proposal seeks to create the Oklahoma Center for American Indian Diabetes and Health Disparities (OCAIDHD). This Center is a widely multi-disciplinary, cross-college organization designed to harvest a significant range of scientific paradigms, special areas of expertise, and research methods all focused on the amelioration of diabetes health disparities among American Indian (AI) people. The OCAIDHD takes as its operational philosophy that 1) all people are inherently valuable, 2) excess morbidity, mortality, and community disruption is unacceptable, 3) cultural diversity is a positive force, and 4) health disparity solutions will be collaborative, multidisciplinary, and biopsychosocially oriented. With these foundational themes, AI diabetes health disparities can be broadly engaged through exploratory research attacking several interconnected problems. The OCAIDHD has at its foundation of organization, the purpose of expanding and evolving that which was accomplished via the EXPORT Center (see Description of the Project). The expansion and evolution leading to the approach delineated in this proposal is found in its new formulation in which the widest range ever of colleges across the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) has been brought to bear on AI diabetes: (Alphabetical after the lead College) Public Health, Allied Health, Arts & Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy, plus the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation that is on the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center campus with staff who are employees of both. There is also the largest ever representation of academic research and education departments (Health Promotion Sciences, Health Policy and Management, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Nutrition Sciences, Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Nursing, Anthropology, and Pharmacy). The disciplines found in this expanded health disparities Center are medical anthropology, internal medicine, endocrinology, pediatrics, nursing, pharmacy, nutrition science, health policy, cultural anthropology, health education, epidemiology, biostatistics, life span studies, pediatric psychology, and Certified Diabetes Education. There are also the following Centers: Prevention Research Center on Native American Health, Oklahoma Diabetes Center, and the General Clinical and Research Center. Last, there is the crucial development of a partnership whose mission it is to assist tribes in improving AI health status and reducing health disparities. The partner is the Oklahoma City Area Inter-Tribal Health Board and its Southern Plains Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center. This organizational system is a veritable biopsychosocial armamentarium of scientific expertise and tools with which to mount a powerful attack on the problem of AI health disparities in diabetes. The specific aims are: 1. Collaborate with AI tribes in the conduct of research on diabetes with special attention to communications, cultural values, and balanced reciprocity in the ongoing interactions between the OCAIDHD and the members of AI Nations. 2. Conduct multidisciplinary research on diabetes in AI populations with the purpose of ameliorating and eliminating the current unacceptable health disparity gap. 3. Increase the potency of the impact of the research by coalescing the multidisciplinary expertise of the Center's research staff into an effective interdisciplinary team aimed at the common goal of AI diabetes health disparities amelioration. 4. Provide constant communications with tribes regarding the progress made by the OCAIDHD with efforts toward the most rapid possible translation of research findings into real life, obvious benefits to the AI people.