Community Engagement Core

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT At the heart of improving minority health and reducing health disparities is the effective engagement of the most affected communities, yet community engagement is not often well planned or executed or is largely rhetorical, resulting in little or no tangible benefits for communities. In fact, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (NHOPI), Filipinos, and other underserved groups in Hawaii have experienced community research done badly, which has led to individual and community distrust of research and researchers. Done correctly, community involvement can lead to increased external validity of studies, increased individual and community capacity for research, decreased participant loss to follow-up, and increased availability and acceptance of beneficial evidence-based interventions in underserved communities. The objective of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to address health disparities and health-related concerns of underserved communities by nurturing, strengthening, and sustaining trust-based collaborative relationships and outcomes-driven engagement with community-based organizations (CBOs) and underserved communities and groups to address their health-related concerns. Specific Aim 1: Nurture trust-based collaborations with communities through capacity building and resource sharing to address community-identified, health-related concerns. a. Expand the CEC community advisory group role. b. Enrich the network of community partners engaged in Ola HAWAII-supported research. c. Engage CBO partner, Hawaii Public Health Institute to facilitate CEC activities. Specific Aim 2: Promote and facilitate community participation in all aspects of health disparities research, including dissemination of research outcomes to community, academic, and policy partners. a. Facilitate Community-Engaged Research Studios to provide researchers with input. b. Expand community engagement in training university researchers on community-engaged research. c. Disseminate research findings through “Reports to the Community” and a quarterly e-bulletin. The CEC will create respectful and sustainable partnerships with CBOs, equitably engage communities in research, and support the bidirectional flow of ideas to better understand health disparities and address them in ways that are acceptable and effective with NHOPI, Filipino, and other vulnerable communities in Hawaii. This will accelerate research to meet the Healthy People 2030 and the NIMHD goals of understanding, addressing, and reducing health disparities in underserved and under-represented populations, while building community capacity for and reducing distrust in university-partnered research.