Mentoring in Community-engaged Research to Promote Outcomes for Latinos

Dr. Page is a Professor of Medicine and infectious disease specialist engaged in clinical care, and public health research with a focus on expanding access to care and quality of care through community-engaged program building and evaluation. Over the last 15 years, her research has focused on: 1) Elucidating the impact of socioeconomic stressors on health; 2) Implementing and evaluating tailored interventions to improve access and quality of care; and 3) Bridging the gap between scientific advances and real-world implementation to reach communities at highest risk of disease. She has established a community coalition that has developed low-cost interventions to improve health outcomes. The objectives of this application are to support a program for mentoring junior investigators interested in community health and to foster innovative epidemiology and implementation science research through interdisciplinary and community-engaged approaches. The research strategy proposed in this award capitalizes on existing multi-stakeholder community-academic-public health partnerships and multiple independently funded research studies. This Mid-Career award explores the multi-level barriers and facilitators of engagement in healthcare and research through peers and technology (hybrid methods) that leverage social networks, mobile health (mHealth) and trusted community health workers. Informed by the Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills model (IMB) and Social Network Theory, Aim 1 will determine the efficiency and acceptability of hybrid methods to promote healthcare engagement. In Aim 2, the study will determine the efficiency and acceptability of using hybrid methods for recruitment, data collection, and research engagement by comparing traditional convenience sampling approaches to sampling using technology-based methods. Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and Research Effectiveness-Adoption Implementation Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with key stakeholders to assess and inform implementation determinants and outcomes of hybrid methods to inform future broad scale implementation (Aim 3). This proposal creates a platform for trainees to learn and apply skills in community-based research, implementation science, mHealth, network analysis, epidemiology, and health disparities. This work also strengthens the research pipeline by offering community-engaged training opportunities for early-stage investigators, especially those with a commitment to improving health outcomes through implementation science.