Community Driven Approach to Mitigate COVID 19 Disparities in Hawaii's Vulnerable Populations

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Achieving “ola” (health in Hawaiian) for the communities suffering disproportionately from genetic, environmental and socioeconomic disparities in health is the rationale for the proposed RCMI Specialized Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The objective of the Center, named Ola HAWAII, is to grow and support a community of health disparities investigators (the “workforce”) to harness the power of diverse thought (the “thinkforce”) to determine the causes of and interventions for health disparities. The Center's objective will be achieved by the following specific aims. Specific Aim 1: Foster and facilitate the conduct of high-impact team-science research addressing health disparities. Plan: Involve all stakeholders in decision-making process of selecting meritorious project proposals and provide funding and infrastructure support for scientifically rigorous R01/R21-type basic biomedical, behavioral and clinical research projects on health disparities. Promote collaborations and partnerships with other RCMI grantee institutions through the RCMI Translational Research Network (RTRN). Specific Aim 2: Strengthen and diversify the basic biomedical, behavioral and clinical research workforce and thinkforce focusing on health disparities. Plan. Identify the most motivated basic biomedical, behavioral and clinical faculty, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, for careers in health disparities research. Identify senior faculty to serve on mentoring teams for new and early-stage investigators. Implement a Team-Science Mentoring Bootcamp for personalized education and skills training. Implement a Team-Science Pilot Projects Program to provide funding, on a competitive basis, to new and early-stage investigators to generate data for grant applications. Specific Aim 3: Enhance, consolidate and sustain core facilities and resources for health disparities research. Plan. Implement objective criteria and metrics to evaluate core needs and usage, core-dependent research productivity, and revenue generation. Consolidate core resources to reduce redundancies. Provide modest funding through a “CoreBucks” Program to maximize utilization of core resources and services across RTRN. Institutional investments will ensure the sustainability of the proposed RCMI Specialized Center to provide the infrastructure and resources for a new era of research excellence on the science of health disparities.