Core D: Special Populations

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PROJECT SUMMARY The Community Engaged Research Core (CERC) of the COBRE on Opioids and Overdose, formerly the Special Populations Core in Phase 1, promotes research among people who are impacted by opioids and overdose, particularly people who are vulnerable and underserved. The CERC supports the overall mission of the COBRE by building research infrastructure and providing services to early-stage investigators to support the recruitment and retention of vulnerable and underserved individuals as research participants and promotes the importance of community engagement with the goal of developing more robust, rigorous, and competitive research projects. Guided by the conceptual and theoretical framework of Community Engaged and Participatory Research, the CERC focuses on addressing the opioid epidemic by supporting and expanding community-engaged research. The near-term goals of the CERC are to support Project Leaders and pilot- funded investigators in the conduct of community-engaged research related to opioids and overdose. The long- term goals of the CERC are to build a sustainable research infrastructure to support research involving people impacted by opioids and overdose, particularly people from vulnerable and underserved communities, across Rhode Island Hospital and affiliated institutions. The CERC promotes clinical, behavioral, and translational research inclusive of community perspectives through four specific aims. Aim 1) Develop, promote, and support best practices related to community engagement in research on opioids and overdose by a) offering trainings and consultations to COBRE-supported investigators, affiliated researchers, and community partner organizations on the Core’s five Principles of Community Empowered Research; b) maintaining and promoting the established community advisory board to advise COBRE investigators at all stages of research; and c) developing and implementing standards for trauma-informed research for COBRE projects. Aim 2) Promote and support the ethical conduct of research on opioids and overdose by: a) providing regulatory support and consultation services for human subjects research; b) creating project-specific advisory panels comprised of researchers and community stakeholders to provide guidance on study design, implementation, and dissemination activities; and c) providing mentoring in traditional research ethics and the ethics of community- engaged research. Aim 3) Promote research on Harm Reduction (HR) by: a) facilitating HR research presentations/workshops and offering HR trainings to community partners; b) supporting investigators conducting HR research by engaging with HR organizations and people who use drugs; and 3) supporting drug checking research within impacted communities. Aim 4) Promote the role of community engagement in achieving rigor and reproducibility by: 1) mentoring new investigators on integrating community-engaged research into study design, recruitment, data collection, and analysis; and 2) conducting workshops on how community-engaged research can assist in strengthening attention to rigor, replication, and issues of external validity across COBRE research activities.