Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research - COMMUNITY LIAISON AND RECRUITMENT CORE (CLRC)

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COMMUNITY LIAISON AND RECRUITMENT CORE (CLRC) ABSTRACT African American older adults continue to lag dramatically behind Non-Hispanic Whites in terms of both health outcomes and participation in health research. The most common barriers to research recruitment are fear and mistrust. The Healthier Black Elders Center (HBEC) Participant Registry of the MCUAAAR employs best practices in the science of recruitment, retention, and continuing program evaluation. We propose three major ways to extend the MCUAAAR’s work in recruitment and retention of older African Americans in research and in the science of recruitment and retention: (1) Enhance the Flint registry through the maturation of the CLRC in Flint. We began building a Community Advisory Board in 2018, and a registry is now underway; (2) Publicize the participant registries to faculty at Michigan, Wayne State and Michigan State doing research in health among older African Americans, and (3) Conduct research on long-term registry members to better understand retention. Our three specific aims are to (1) Expand our long-established participant registry and older African American involvement in research; (2) Contribute to the science of recruitment and retention of older African Americans by examining the characteristics of our program and the registry participants who remain in the registry long-term and (3) Enhance our established nationally recognized model for successfully engaging African American communities. The CLRC is clearly present in all of the MCUAAAR cores and REC. The Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, directed by MPI Peter Lichtenberg, houses the HBEC. The Analysis Core is involved in each of the recruitment and retention projects led by the CLRC. Finally, the REC integrates the CLRC into community-based research projects with older African Americans. The LAC, REC and CLRC will work together to plan the summer workshops focused on best practices for community based research on African American older adults.