HEALTH PROMOTION & DISEASE PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Morehouse School of Medicine Prevention Research Center (MSM PRC) seeks continuation funding for the 2009-2014 project period. The MSM PRC conducts interdisciplinary community-based research on prevention in African American and other minority communities, trains minority community-based researchers and public health practitioners, and demonstrates the value of community coalitions in conducting research. The Center is governed by a "Community Coalition Board" (CCB) that represents a partnership among Neighborhood Planning Units (NPUs) V, X, Y, and Z, three academic institutions and six agencies (including state and local health departments). The bylaws of the CCB require majority of its membership reflect the community and that the Board Chair always be a community representative. The Center's overall goals are to conduct health promotion and disease prevention research that: 1. Focuses on the major causes of death and disability, especially those that lead to racial/ethnic health status disparities, by testing and demonstrating culturally appropriate health promotion interventions; 2. Improves public health practice within communities by promoting community control of programs and resources and building community capacity to promote health; 3. Cultivates more effective state and local public health programs by communicating and disseminating information on progressive and culturally appropriate approaches to health promotion and disease prevention; and 4. Prepares the next generation of minority translation research scientists, clinicians, prevention research scientists and public health practitioners by providing opportunities for medical students and graduate students in public health and in clinical research to participate in and learn from community-based participatory research projects and programs. Prevention Intervention: Meeting Them at the Gate (PIMTAG) is the Core Research Project for the Center. PIMTAG is a mixed method prevention intervention study that seeks to reduce the risk of primary HIV/STD infections of or by jailed African American males with a history of substance abuse re-entering Atlanta communities through the administration of an educationally based behavior modification intervention. RELEVANCE (See instructions): PIMTAG will impact public health by addressing the Healthy People (HP) 2010 HIV goal to prevent HIV infection and its related illness and death. The Project seeks to reduce the risk of primary HIV/STD infections of or by jailed African American males with a history of substance abuse. Targeted populations in both HP 2010 and PIMTAG Aims are persons disproportionately affected by HIV-African-American males.