PREVENTION AND CONTROL CORE

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Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College (MMC) have joined talents and resources in our Prevention and Control (P&C) Core, which promotes important, innovative diabetes-related translational research. The P&C core consists of two units, a Clinical Outcomes & Behavioral Science (COBS) Unit and a Community Outreach & Health Disparities (COHD) Unit. Together these units provide distinctive services along the translational research continuum. Our work is designed to achieve a comon goal, namely to translate diabetes research advances into clinical or community practice. Important components of our work are understanding and reducing racial and ethnic health disparities. The P&C Core and its two units provide services to investigators with externally funded, diabetes-related translational research addressing the following areas: innovations in care, community engagement, culturally-sensitive/competent interventions, clinical trials, quality improvement, quality assurance, health services research, clinical and psychosocial epidemiology, physical and social environments, and community-based participatory research. During the current funding cycle, the COBS Unit made a successful transition from a group that was funded to conduct research projects in the area of patient education and psychosocial aspects of diabetes to a core designed to support externally funded research. At the same time, the COHD Unit similarly evolved to be a leader in research on racial and ethnic health disparities. While we will continue our support of these research areas, we have also greatly expanded the P&C's support services for health services research by recruiting additional investigators and adding new services. P&C Core resources allowed investigators to increase the quality of talent and resources to which they had access, thus leveraging limited resources. The opening of the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Clinic in 2005 is providing additional translational research opportunities. With P&C Core support, investigators made significant findings about how patient literacy and numeracy impact diabetes care, about factors involved the relapse of diabetes control, and about how community factors impact diabetes care. In addition, the P&C Core continues to enhance the career development of junior investigators at Vanderbilt and Meharry, many of whom were supported by the DRTC's Pilot and Feasibility Grant mechanism. The P&C Core continues to play an integral role in overall Vanderbilt DRTC activities including its seminar series, its annual Diabetes Day, training programs, and leadership. The P&C Core is also engaged in collaborative efforts with other institutions and DRTCs to raise the visibility of and improve access to translational, diabetes-related research services.