RCMI Center for Health Disparities Research

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Abstract - Overall The North Carolina Central University (NCCU) seeks competitive renewal of its RCMI - Center for Health Disparities Research (RCHDR) to continue enhancing NCCU's research ecosystem to develop investigators who are conducting impactful and cutting-edge research to address health disparities (HD). The Center is an interdisciplinary effort at NCCU housed at the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute (BBRI), an institute opened in 1999 to pursue research disproportionately afflicting minority populations in NC and to diversify the research workforce. In this renewal application, a concerted effort was made to establish an inclusive, diverse, and representative leadership team for the RCHDR through a group of senior- and mid-level experienced individuals. The Center will be comprised of four Cores: Administrative Core (AC); Research Capacity Core (RCC) (arranged into 5 sub-cores); Investigator Development Core (IDC) and Community Engagement Core (CEC) supporting one basic and one behavioral full biomedical research project plus pilot studies. The Center will continue to leverage resources and partnerships at neighboring research organizations in the Research Triangle Park, NC area, with community based organizations (CBOs) in rural and urban NC as well as the nationwide RCMI network via the RCMI coordinating center to advance the following three specific aims: (1) Enhance basic biomedical and behavioral HD research at NCCU by conducting two innovative research projects and instituting a restructured RCC with innovative capabilities to support basic and behavioral biomedical and population health projects, while enriching our research ecosystem; (2) Prepare and enable all investigators (including postdoctoral, early stage, research track, tenure-track and tenured) to become successful extramurally funded HD researchers through coordinated activities of the AC and IDC; and (3) Strengthen and grow the CEC by fostering existing and new sustainable relationships with CBOs and local health departments to further extend the community-based network for continued engagement with stakeholders and dissemination and implementation of HD research findings. In this competitive renewal, we will continue our focus on basic biomedical and behavioral sciences. Continued support of our RCMI – Center, through leveraging previous work and the commitment of NCCU to biomedical research, will have profound impact on the region, while greatly enhancing the research capacity at this HBCU and driving it towards achieving its mission of addressing health disparities.