Community Maternal & Child Health-Eastern North Carolina

描述(申请人提供)：孕产妇和儿童健康在婴儿死亡率、早产和获得医疗保健方面的差距仍然是北卡罗来纳州的重要问题，并对该州以农村为主的东部地区的人们造成不成比例的影响。拟议的调查建立在东部北卡罗来纳州爱婴联盟、北卡罗来纳州塞西尔·G·谢普斯卫生服务研究中心和北卡罗来纳州母婴保健部之间为期五年的合作基础上。我们建议提高研究和干预能力，以了解和消除北卡罗来纳州农村地区的健康差距，方法是开展与社区相关的合作，并实施旨在了解社区对孕产妇、婴儿和儿童健康影响的试点研究。在这项提案中，合作研究规划过程及其成功实施在实现我们的目标方面给予了同等的重视。形成过程包括为社区合作伙伴和其他少数群体调查人员开发独特的培训机会，以改善社区基础设施，以进行健康差距研究和干预。这一过程还将为大学调查人员提供机会，以增加他们在农村NC社区工作的网络和能力。建议的试点研究旨在与社区制定合作研究问题，这些问题可以通过婴儿爱加评估目前的数据收集工作得到回答，并利用地理信息系统来探索社区的社会环境背景。最终，我们提出了一个合理节奏的、系统地开发一个全面的社区合作的多层次研究项目的过程。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Maternal and child health disparities in infant mortality, preterm birth, and access to health care persist as important problems in North Carolina, and disproportionately affect people in the predominantly rural Eastern part of the state. The investigations proposed build upon a five-year collaboration among the Eastern NC Baby Love Plus Consortium, the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, and the UNC Department of Maternal and Child Health. We propose to increase research and intervention capacity toward understanding and eliminating health disparities in rural North Carolina by developing a community-linked collaboration, and by implementing pilot studies aimed at understanding community influences on maternal, infant, and child health. In this proposal, the collaborative research planning process and its successful implementation are given equal weight in achieving our goals. The formative process includes the development of unique training opportunities for the community partners and other minority investigators to improve community infrastructure for conducting health disparity research and intervention. The process will also provide opportunities for University investigators to increase their networks and competence to work in rural NC communities. Suggested pilot studies aim to formulate collaborative research questions with the community that can be answered through current data collection efforts of the Baby Love Plus Evaluation, and to utilize geographic information systems to explore community socio-environmental context. Ultimately, we present a process for a reasonably paced, systematic development of a full-scale community-partnered multi-level research project.