Improving Black sarcoidosis patients’ care with a collaboratively developed, patient centered program

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Project Summary/Abstract The purpose of this K23 Career Development Award is to develop Logan Harper MD, MS as an independent investigator with a focus in health disparity research in sarcoidosis. This funding will allow pursuit of his research plans to develop a patient centered intervention to address root causes of health disparities seen in Black sarcoidosis patients. The structured mentoring plan includes hands-on experience administering and analyzing a large prospective patient questionnaire study, and using community-based research techniques to develop and pilot test an intervention collaboratively developed with Black sarcoidosis patients to address root causes of health disparities. This experience will be supplemented with structured coursework in statistical and community-based research techniques. This work will provide accelerated development of an independent career path. Dr. Harper will benefit from a multidisciplinary team of mentors, including Dr. Daniel Culver, a world authority on sarcoidosis, Dr. J Daryl Thornton, an expert in health disparities and community-based participatory research, and Dr. Raed Dweik, a proven mentor of early career researchers. Under the supervision of Drs. Culver and Thornton, Dr. Harper has quantitatively established the association of social factors with healthcare disparities, and qualitatively interviewed patients to understand patient important mediators of health disparities in sarcoidosis. This work supports the feasibility of the present research proposal, which aims to 1) quantify the association of patient reported barriers to care with patient important sarcoidosis outcomes through prospectively collected surveys, 2) utilize community-based research to collaboratively develop an intervention to address mediators of poor sarcoidosis outcomes in Black sarcoidosis patients, and 3) pilot test the intervention developed in aim 2 with local Black sarcoidosis patients to determine acceptability, uptake, and identify appropriate outcomes and sample size for a future randomized controlled trial. Completion of the proposed project will provide the most comprehensive characterization of patient reported mediators of sarcoidosis outcomes to date. Additionally, this work will lay the ground work for a future multi-centered cluster randomized controlled trial of a novel, patient designed intervention to reduce healthcare disparities in Black sarcoidosis patients. The training in this structured mentoring plan is designed to provide Dr. Harper the framework to seek further research funding near the completion of this award, a step towards his goal of becoming an independent clinician scientist.