Rutgers-NYU Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity

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Overall – Abstract In response to RFA-MD-21-007, we propose the Rutgers-NYU Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity (CAHPE) to advance interdisciplinary research on comorbid cardiometabolic disease and mental health of Asian adults. There are currently significant disparities in relationship to Heart and Mind, with lower thresholds for BMI for Asians and disproportionate disparities related to cardiometabolic disease and mental health. Such an important focus in research, population and investigators will inform both practice and policy at community, regional and national levels. Asians are the fastest growing yet most understudied US minority group at 23 million people and growing 26% from 2010-2019. Yet, < 1% of NIH research funding in the last 10 years were focused on US Asian populations. Moreover, this population experiences the “Asian Paradox”: while on average, US Asians, are the highest-income earners and the most highly educated, more Asians, especially older adults, live below the poverty line, are less likely to participate in biomedical research, and suffer disproportional health disparities compared to white Americans. These health inequities are further complicated by the heterogeneity of these immigrant populations, especially with respect to culture, religion, language, sexual identity, and trauma exposure, many of which challenge our assumptions about the “model minority” stereotype. Building on two decades of rigorous aging research in minority populations and track records of successful academic achievements, we have leveraged strong existing transdisciplinary partnerships across multiple academic and community institutions to build a center designed to foster the next generation of diverse researchers in a nurturing environment that is conducive to success and promotes highly relevant and rigorous translational research on cardiometabolic and mental health outcomes among US Asians. With strong institutional support of $3 million in matching funds, our Center will have five inter-connected aims: 1) Provide leadership, organizational communication, and evaluation systems designed to achieve the overarching goals of supporting high quality and enduring inter-disciplinary research on cardiometabolic and mental health outcomes among Asian adults; 2) Guide solicitation and selection of 6 pilot studies per year; 3) Implement the three interdisciplinary, translational, and synergistic R01-like projects with specific focus on: Nutritional, Positive Affect, and Dementia Caregiving Interventions to multi-prong target diverse Asian population at high risk; 4) Enhance, track, and evaluate existing infrastructure to support and synchronize the pilot and center projects; and 5) Disseminate these findings to the local, regional, and national levels in order to inform the design of future prevention/intervention research commodities. The overall aims of this application reflect the synergistic work of the Administrative Core (AC), Investigator Development Core (IDC), Community Engagement Core (CEC), and research projects.