Community Engagement and Outreach

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The Community Engagement and Outreach (CEO) Core of the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) brings patients, providers, and community members together to ensure that the Institute's research agenda reflects the health priorities of rural communities, and that study findings and recommendations inform practical, sustainable, and scalable strategies to promote health. CEO's efforts are informed by a state- wide Community Advisory Board representing lay communities, patients, health care providers, public health workers, civic organizations, payers, and philanthropic non-profits organizations. The overall goal of CEO is to ensure that all West Virginians benefit from the advances in biomedical and behavioral approaches that will ultimately improve our state's health outcomes with realization of the following specific aims: 1) actively engage patients and other community stakeholders as research partners, 2) transform community-identified research questions into externally-funded projects that improve health outcomes in WVCTSI priority health areas, including addiction & emerging epidemics (e.g., hepatitis C), cancer, cardiovascular disease, and chronic lung disease, and 3) translate and disseminate research results to inform West Virginia health policy and practice. We will accomplish these Aims through a community-based research and education process to build trust and enhance learning. This process will include completing community concept maps and creating and implementing a novel curriculum on community-based participatory research for use with rural populations. Aim 1 achievement will result in engaged patients and community members who are motivated to serve as research partners but who will need assistance to do so. Similarly, many investigators and health care providers are inexperienced in community-engaged research and will also need guidance. For Aim 2, CEO will employ shared learning approaches for training, mentoring, and technical assistance in community-engaged research approaches. Our diverse partners will learn from each other, combining their capacities in a complementary fashion to conduct research with translational impact, affording a level of understanding and trust that could not be achieved by individually engaging stakeholders. Aim 3 activities include working with patient, provider, community members, and research partners to develop a comprehensive dissemination plan, providing translation and distribution of research results to multiple audiences. Dissemination of findings back to our partners to inform health policy and practice brings us full circle in our engagement efforts.