Community Engagement and Outreach Core

The Center for Pacific Innovations, Knowledge, and Opportunities (PIKO) will develop a robust clinical and translational research (CTR) infrastructure for Hawaii to implement CTR to reduce health disparities among indigenous Pacific Peoples (IPPs; defined as Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Filipinos) and other medically underserved and vulnerable groups. Community-academic partnerships will accelerate the pace of CTR advances to improve IPP health and wellbeing and close the gap in the health disparities in Hawaii. The objective of the Community Engagement and Outreach (CEO) Core is to enhance engagement and strengthen partnerships with IPP and other underserved communities in Hawaii. The CEO Core brings together the Laulima Collaborative comprised of practice-based organizations (PBO) and other community-based organizations (CBO) to achieve the following Specific Aims: Specific Aim 1: Strengthen the statewide Laulima Collaborative for community-engaged CTR by providing strategic investments in the Laulima Collaborative to sustain trust-based partnerships; enhancing strategies to promote participation of IPP-focused PBO and other CBO in CTR and encourage participation in practice-based research network (PBRN) projects; and building institutional capacity to respond to prioritized IPP health issues. Specific Aim 2: Facilitate the conduct of community-engaged CTR by mentoring junior investigators (JI) and established investigators (EI) to conduct community-engaged CTR; linking JI/EI with research-ready community partners; and developing an IPP participant registry to maximize recruitment and retention for CTR. Specific Aim 3: Employ community-driven strategies to disseminate and implement CTR findings by establishing a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to coordinate CEO Core activities, review pilot projects, and interface with the Internal and External Advisory Committees; convening an annual workshop to set strategic goals, share best practices for community-engaged CTR and dissemination and implementation; and implementing an active communication and dissemination plan to ensure that research findings and innovations are shared with intended communities in a user-friendly format. At the end of 5 years, the CEO Core will have helped to expand and sustain CTR partnerships by facilitating the bidirectional flow of ideas between academic and community partners to reduce health disparities and by creating productive, supportive environments for JI/EI to collaboratively conduct CTR. Moreover, the CEO Core will have connected communities, investigators, and other PIKO cores to ensure culturally-appropriate methods, tools, and interventions were used to reduce health disparities in communities across Hawaii.