The University of Iowa PRC was first funded in 2002. The Center is within the Department of Community and Behavioral Health, in the College of Public Health. With this application, we are changing our title to the University of Iowa Prevention Research Center for Rural Health (PRC-RH) to emphasize our commitment to rural communities. Our mission is to improve the health of rural communities in Iowa and the Midwest. We will accomplish this by establishing and maintaining community partnerships and conducting research on health issues of mutual interest, leveraging our collective resources in the most effective ways possible. The activities of the PRC-RH include: establishing a research agenda on nutrition, physical activity, and aging, conducting core and other rural- focused research using sound research methods, communication and dissemination of activities and findings, conducting training on community organizing in rural environments, and Center evaluation. The PRC-RH's research themes of nutrition, physical activity, and aging are consistent with national and state health priorities identified in Healthy People 2010, Rural Healthy People 2010, and Healthy lowans 2010. The research themes also meet local health priorities as evidenced in the series of community health assessments that were conducted from 2003-2006 in Keokuk County and Iowa County. All partners contribute to the capacity of the PRC-RH to accomplish our mission. The PRC-RH faculty and academic partners have expertise or experience in community engagement, training, communication and dissemination, evaluation, community-based participatory research, and public health practice. Community partners have expertise or experience in communication and participation in community-based participatory research. They also have knowledge of partner communities, public health concerns in the community, and public health practice.
Rural populations, including the rural Midwest, are seriously understudied in regard to health promotion. Health promotion interventions that have been shown to be effective in urban settings do not often translate well into rural settings for a wide variety of reasons. We want to advance understanding of these unique settings in the public health research and practice communities
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