Northwestern University Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training (NU-MHRT)

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ABSTRACT Efforts to understand and eliminate health disparities are hampered by the disproportionately low representation of health disparities populations in biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences research, domestically and globally. This has profound implications for the cultural appropriateness and quality of health research and health care involving health disparity populations. The proposed training program “Northwestern University Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training” ( NU MHRT ) will provide health disparities research training experiences to minority and other underrepresented students and trainees (heretofore “trainees”) at the undergraduate through postdoctoral levels in order to prepare and enhance the next generation of scientists committed to research for improving minority health and reducing health disparities. NU-MHRT will also foster a health disparities research training partnership between Northwestern University (NU) and two federally designated Minority Serving Institutions, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). Northwestern offers a world class research training environment with state-of-the-art multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary research programs in the health sciences. Leveraging our transdisciplinary team of well-established research faculty mentors, alongside our strong track record fostering community partnership, engagement, education, outreach and research career development of students from health disparities populations, over 5 years this program will provide mentored research training and immersion experiences, individual career development, and tailored didactic learning opportunities to support the advancement of 50 trainees from health disparities populations to their next stage in health disparities-focused research careers. A strength of this program is the setting of Northwestern University in Chicago, a metropolitan area rife with health disparities and an incubator of diverse, multi- disciplinary research programs aimed at reducing those disparities, including many led by the PI and Program Faculty within Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, the Institute of Public Health and Medicine, and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Specific Aims are: 1) Provide health disparities research training to 50 trainees (10/year, including 5 undergraduates, 3 pre-, and 2 post-doctoral trainees), from diverse underrepresented backgrounds, to foster the next generation of scientists committed to research focused on improving minority health and reducing health disparities; 2) Establish and support a cadre of research mentors and trainee candidates for health disparities research training by refining a health disparities research training partnership between NU and Chicago area institutions serving underserved health disparity populations and underrepresented students; 3) Formally evaluate trainee progress and the success of the research training program with respect to successful recruitment of highly qualified diverse trainees, within- program trainee achievement of program goals, and post-program trainee performance/career outcomes.