In this competitive renewal we seek to build the """"""""Rochester-Sichuan-Hong Kong ICOHRTA"""""""" (RSHK ICOHRTA). It will be collaboratively based in the Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide (CSPS) of the University of Rochester Medical Center;in the West China School of Public Health and the Mental Health Center of Sichuan University (SCU), Chengdu, China;and in our two continuing collaborating sites, the Department of Psychiatry of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Hong Kong (HK) Jockey Club Suicide Research and Prevention Centre (SRPC) of The University of Hong Kong (HKU). The first version of this ICOHRTA began with the CSPS and CUHK as the MFC institution. As part of the initial proposal, one of the primary infrastructure building objectives involved reaching out to new partners;HKU was added during 2002 at the time that the SRPC was formed, and colleagues from SCU were invited to join the new iteration of this collaborative network during summer 2005 at a time when we were developing new studies in Sichuan. The CSPS, in conjunction with our HK collaborators, also fostered the development of a related training effort in Beijing, which now is funded separately by the Fogarty International Center. Suicide and attempted suicide are major public health problems, recognized in China and HK, in the US, and by the WHO. Yet it only has been during the past decade that formal public health research efforts have been developing. The CSPS has been among the vanguard in the US, and with the development of the ICOHRTA, internationally. With its array of NIH-supported grants and diverse faculty, it has provided an extraordinarily successful setting for preparing US and Chinese trainees to become independent peer- reviewed researchers. The ICHORTA has catalyzed rapid research infrastructure growth in HK, and has begun the systematic process of fostering such growth in several sites on the China mainland. The RSHK ICOHRTA will continue the success of our vibrant training and research alliances between HK and Rochester, and provide the base for extending them to Sichuan. We will, as before, build infrastructure, train new investigators, conduct novel research, and rigorously evaluate these efforts in a fashion that continuously builds the quality of our collaborative efforts and enterprise. Gradually the scope of our work will shift from risk-factor oriented studies to a greater focus on the design, implementation, and testing of novel prevention programs.
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