The Office of AIDS Research has as objective to advance research that leads to better community adoption of effective interventions, and has emphasized its support for research examining exchange of knowledge between service providers and researchers. The study of research collaborations can affect public health by: 1) enhancing relevance of research questions and results;2) developing community-friendly programs;and 3) promoting community adoption of interventions. This request for an NIMH Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) will enable the applicant to develop a career to focus on 1) examining factors that facilitate HIV prevention research collaboration in minority communities, 2) developing evidence-based models of collaboration that can be replicated, 3) determining optimal mechanisms for collaboration, and 4) examining the impact of researcher-provider collaboration on the effectiveness and adoption of interventions. Plans have been made for mentoring, consultation, and advanced course-taking that will help the applicant accomplish the following goals: 1) To examine key features of HIV prevention research collaboration (actors, functions, contexts, barriers);2) To acquire training in the collection, management, and analysis of quantitative data, and in the development and testing of structural equation models of collaboration;3) To build expertise in community-based participatory HIV prevention research methods;and 4) To conduct HIV prevention collaborative research in partnership with multiple Community-Based Organizations domestically and internationally. A K01 at this stage of the applicant's career will support an ethnic minority social work investigator to sharpen his research skills, and enhance his ability to develop cutting edge methods for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting behavioral data. In order to accomplish this, the applicant proposes a research plan involving two complementary studies. Using qualitative methods, Study One will identify facilitators and barriers to providers'collaboration in HIV prevention research, and refine a conceptual model of collaboration that will reflect the perspectives of providers. Using structural equation modeling, Study Two will examine how various factors in the model will interact with one another, thus allowing the applicant to make inferences on the relative importance of each of the factors that influence providers'collaboration. This research will shed light on specific modifiable factors that may help researchers engage providers in collaborative research.
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