Central Plains Center for American Indian Health Disparities (CPC-AIHD) Revision

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): American Indians (Al) suffer some of the greatest health disparities in the US. Many conditions, including asthma, obesity, and diabetes, are prevalent among Al and are influenced by the places Al live. In addition, Al have high rates of severe physical housing problems and the highest rates of smoking of any ethnic group in the US. The KUMC Center for American Indian Community Health (CAICH) was created in 2010 through a P20 Exploratory Center of Excellence grant to study and address health disparities faced by Al. The current proposal, for a CAICH Environmental Health Subcore, will capitalize on CAICH's infrastructure and community connectedness and strengthen a burgeoning partnership with the Children's Mercy Hospital Center for Environmental Health. This partnership will expand and continue to address environmental issues brought to our attention by our Community Advisory Boards. Long before CAICH existed, researchers at KUMC were using community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods to work with the Al community to address pressing health concerns. Environmental health and housing issues have come up repeatedly in community discussions and our continued partnership with the Center for Environmental Health will allow us to study and further address them. We propose the following specific aims: (1) To create an Environmental Health Subcore (EHS) in the CAICH Community Engagement Core to support current and future training and education, outreach, and research projects; and (2) To expand our research project examining tribal college students' tobacco use to include exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and availability of tobacco products using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping. The EHS will provide GIS mapping services to our tribal college project and new environmental health pilot projects; provide environmental health education to community members, health care providers, and building maintenance personnel; conduct healthy homes assessments; and provide research and service opportunities for Master's in Public Health students in our track in environmental health and college students majoring in environmental science at Haskell Indian Nations University.