Community Maternal & Child Health-Eastern North Carolina

描述（由申请人提供）：孕产妇和儿童的健康差距，婴儿死亡率，早产，并获得医疗保健持续存在的重要问题，在北卡罗来纳州，并不成比例地影响人们在主要是农村东部的国家。这项调查是建立在东部北卡罗来纳州婴儿爱加联盟、北卡罗来纳州塞西尔G。Sheps卫生服务研究中心和卫生部妇幼保健部。我们建议增加研究和干预能力，以了解和消除健康差距在农村北卡罗来纳州通过发展一个与社区联系的合作，并通过实施试点研究，旨在了解社区对孕产妇，婴儿和儿童健康的影响。在这项建议中，合作研究规划过程及其成功实施在实现我们的目标方面具有同等重要性。形成过程包括为社区合作伙伴和其他少数民族调查人员提供独特的培训机会，以改善社区基础设施，进行健康差异研究和干预。这一进程还将为大学调查人员提供机会，以增加他们在北卡罗来纳州农村社区工作的网络和能力。建议进行的试点研究旨在与社区共同提出合作研究问题，这些问题可以通过“Baby Love Plus评价”目前的数据收集工作来回答，并利用地理信息系统探索社区的社会环境背景。最终，我们提出了一个合理的节奏，系统的发展，一个全面的社区合作的多层次的研究项目的过程。

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.