Community Appalachian Investigation and Research Network (CAIRN)

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A novel paradigm has been developed in rural Appalachia within West Virginia and shown that trained adolescents interested in science can with guidance conduct Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The "Community Appalachian Investigation and Research Network (CAIRN)" partnership is based on a community created Health Science and Technology Academy (HSTA), a state wide network of science clubs for adolescents built in partnership with West Virginia University, a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) to HSTA; a West Virginia IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (WV- INBRE) grant; and clinical translational scientists at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), with its Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA). This partnership has recently transformed educational goals of HSTA program to also include active conduct of CBPR in the community. Initial feasibility CBPR has shown a prevalence of obesity and diabetes in this community at epidemic proportions greater in this community than elsewhere, that selectively targets families. The goal of this proposal is to extend, expand, and implement infrastructure requirements through CAIRN to facilitate quality CBPR by and within the community to change cultural lifestyle behavior to improve family and community health. Specifically, we propose to build and implement four interactive core activities to complement existing resources. 1.) Educate the Educators Program to foster bi-directional flow of information between the multiple levels of the CAIRN program, integrating CTSA:INBRE:SEPA with the HSTA community about CBPR and health care. 2.) Community Study Core to foster organization, design, conduct, and analysis of CBPR. This includes: epidemiological cohort studies of gene, social and environmental interactions; structured focus group research on attitudes, motivation and culture that relate to health care; and lifestyle intervention studies. 3.) Community Research Associate Network as a new community based discipline of CBPR trained scientist educators in the field to integrate academia and the community and become CBPR scientists. 4.) HSTA Family Network to provide enhanced information technology (IT) to include electronic Management of Clinical Translation Research (eM-CTR) and a new Family Health Portal to facilitate bidirectional information flow and organization while maintaining security and confidentiality. These cores are designed to interface the community and academia, and interact seamlessly with each other. In conjunction with the extensive educational infrastructure in place they will permit us to raise the quality of CBPR, and extend the range of hypotheses that can be tested. This approach will initially be applied to obesity management and diabetes prevention but is scalable to any disease relevant to this community. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Community Appalachian Investigation and Research Network (CAIRN) proposal is in response to an ARRA initiative for infrastructure for Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) on obesity management and diabetes prevention in rural West Virginia. The infrastructure includes mentoring, teaching study design, and research conduct and implementing an information technology network.