Bipolar Illness Intervention in Hispanic Communities

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This program seeks to establish a Developing Center for Interventions and Service Research (DCISR) that will forge an academic-community partnership to conduct interdisciplinary interventions research that will improve care of bipolar disorders, study moderators and mediators in the community that affect outcomes and participation in clinical research, and be of particular relevance to Hispanic Americans. The DCISR will enable the applicants to expand and develop their research capabilities, and contribute to greater alignment of research outcomes with community needs. With the DCISR infrastructure, the applicants will increase community involvement in study planning and management, and develop study designs better able to improve community-relevant interventions and the generalizability of results. These accomplishments will be greatly enriched by the opportunity to study in a comparative effort the Hispanic population that constitutes 55% of the population of the ninth largest city in the U.S. The DCISR brings together a multidisciplinary group of investigators with differing research foci around a central area of interventions and public health study on BD. The DCISR will develop a scale that provides an aggregate measure of psychopathology in BD, as well as sub-scale measurement of the full scope of depressive and manic symptomatology and will integrate data on clinical, treatment, neuroimaging, and genetic research in bipolar subjects into one central database. The training components of the Center will capitalize on the interdisciplinary model, with its potential for training beyond a primary focus of interest and access a broader group of mentors with relevant expertise to interventions research in BD. The scientific theme of the DCISR will be to provide a focal point for BD research in the UTHSCSA and the San Antonio area. Administration of the Center will be led by an Operations Committee that will have responsibility for the evaluation of intervention studies, linking research staff and objectives of the DCISR with the community and community stakeholders, oversight of data management and statistical operations, infrastructure development, training, program planning and insuring that the Center goals and vision are inculcated in all its activities. The committee will work to integrate the efforts of diverse faculty participating in the DCISR, meet with and solicit the input of the Community Advisory Committee, and convey the DCISR accomplishments within the Center and beyond. The OC will oversee maintenance of DCISR resources and relationships, and monitor all DCISR studies. The strategic plan of the Center emphasizes facilitating interdisciplinary investigation, forging alliances with the community, and incorporating the information learned from study of the community into modification of designs of intervention studies, recruitment efforts, and translational efforts back to community caregivers and patients with BD. These infrastructure developments will then support two developmental projects and additional pilot studies.