High quality translation research poses many unique challenges for investigative teams including: 1) working with community organizations; 2) conducting studies in community settings; 3) obtaining input from the community on study design and implementation issues; 4) requiring expertise from many different disciplines; 5) collecting and analyzing data on the environmental context in which people live; 6) interacting with other institutions such as universities, health department, and health care systems; 7) implementing interventions in multiple settings and capturing process evaluation and fidelity data; and 8) identifying opportunities to train and educate key study personnel and research partners. Over the past 15 years, Vanderbilt scientists studying diabetes and diabetes related problems (e.g., obesity) have increased their capacity to plan and conduct community-engaged and translation research. The purpose of the Diabetes Community Engaged Research Core (D-CERC) is to continue to support and enhance the capacity of the diabetes research community. To accomplish this, we have three specific aims: 1) Create an environment that fosters community-engaged diabetes translation research through building networks of investigators, actively engaging community and government organizations, and support the research through expertise-based consultations; 2) Achieve integration with existing research services provided within Vanderbilt and at partner institutions; and 3) Enhance community-engaged research services by continuing to provide health geography services to investigators, and adding web-based process evaluation as a new service. In this application, we describe 10 grants or contracts that were supported by the D-CERC during the current funding cycle. These include community-engaged research projects on diabetes and obesity. The health geography core provided services to seven of these projects. Five of the projects included a web-based process evaluation page which is a proposed service for the upcoming funding cycle. In addition, we briefly describe nine sources of support for community-engaged and translation research that the D-CERC will help investigators navigate and utilize. The extension of the health geography core will continue to develop and maintain map and data layers, geocode the addresses of study participants, create maps for investigators, and create data layers for multi- level linear models. The process evaluation service will take the Process Analysis Web System (PAWS) and create a web site template, refine the software and development tools, create a well-documented user's manual, and make this available to the research community. One of the main tasks of the D-CERC is to coordinate our work with the Community Outreach and Health Disparities Core (COHDC) at Meharry Medical College. Drs. Schlundt and Hargreaves will meet regularly to insure that investigators are making use of the services of both cores, to track service utilization, and to report periodically on progress.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 237 publications
