RESEARCH CORE

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The proposed Center is dedicated to the creation of effective, sustainable, community-inspired programs to improve the health of minority communities in Harlem. Through our past and continuing work, we have developed a proven strategy for overcoming the multiple barriers to good health in our community. This strategy entails identifying the modifiable causes of underuse of proven-effective therapies; developing culturally-appropriate interventions to remedy those causes, with specific emphasis on enhancing patient self-management skills; rigorously testing these interventions; and, if they prove effective, transforming them into operating health programs. Community partners participate in every stage of this process. The Research Core will elaborate and expand on this foundation. The specific aims of the Research Core are: 1. To develop new health improvement interventions that target postpartum depression and recurrent stroke-two important illnesses contributing to health disparities in Harlem, 2. To focus these interventions on reducing underuse of effective care by improving patients' selfmanagement skills, 3. To evaluate these interventions using the most rigorous research methods and designs, 4. To employ sophisticated data modeling methods to ascertain which components of proven-effective interventions are most responsible for delivering their benefits, and 5. To facilitate the translation of proven-effective interventions into sustainable clinical practices. From our extensive experience in conducting high quality disparities research, we believe the projects selected for the Research Core hold great promise for improving the health of our community. The exploration of what components of the interventions contribute to their success will deepen our understanding of how disparities can be remedied, and how research can be efficiently translated to sustainable programs in clinical practice. Throughout the completion of these aims, the Research Core will facilitate collaboration and exchange of information between research projects with in the Core; between Cores within the Center, and between the Center and the larger Mount Sinai disparities research community.