The goal of this K24 renewal is for Dr. Corbie-Smith to establish a premier research infrastructure to provide exceptional training for the next generation of CVD researchers who address the health and healthcare of patients who bear a disproportionate burden of CVD morbidity and mortality. Dr. Corbie-Smith has made excellent use of the support provided in the first cycle of her K24. She has been highly productive, with an impressive trajectory of peer-reviewed publications in the emerging field of community engaged research. She has been successful in funding her work, obtaining a new R01 grant focused on dissemination of an evidence based intervention to reduce CVD risk in rural African American populations. She has mentored her first trainees to independence, and new trainees she has mentored with her K24 support have been successful in terms of publications and funding. She has successfully mentored trainees in diverse fields such as nursing, medicine, health behavior, and epidemiology and the vast majority of trainees are scholars of color. This renewal will make it possible for the candidate to further develop her research program, and use her research program as a platform for her mentoring. She will leverage her ongoing R01, the Center for Health Equity Research, the Sheps Center for Health Services Research and NC Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute, as a resource for her mentees. Bringing together the extensive career development resources of the Center for Health Equity Research, Sheps and NC Translational and Clinical Science Institute with the mentoring resources of the K24 gives the candidate a unique opportunity to develop exceptional mentoring to improve CVD outcomes. The proposed aims are to: (1) engage community members to define, map and programs. Finally, she will use the K24 to develop an innovative new research direction, examining the association between organizational networks in rural AA communities and sustainability of CVD interventions assess CVD risk reduction assets available in rural settings; (2) use mixed methods to understand the factors (communication, cooperation, and competition) that influence collaboration among organizations with CVD risk reduction programming; (3) conduct network analysis to understand how organizational networks change over time in rural communities among organizations conducting CVD risk reduction programming; and (4) examine the association between organizational networks and a) sustainability of CVD risk reduction interventions and b) CVD outcomes among participants in those interventions. The candidate will also continue a formal mentoring program with plans for the recruitment, selection, development, and evaluation of mentees who will become successful leaders in CVD disparities research. Each mentee will have a focused career development plan that includes directed didactic and developmental activities and a mentored research project that will lead to first author publications.
The proposed research is relevant to public health because disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD risk factors are dramatic in rural and minority communities with limited access to quality healthcare. In this proposal, we will define assets that already exist in communities to reduce CVD risk and examine how organizational assets and networks evolve and are associated with sustainability of interventions to reduce population CVD risk. Combined with the mentoring component, to train new and early stage researchers to conduct high impact CVD prevention research, the proposed research is highly relevant to NHLBI's mission to enhance the health of patients so that they can live longer and more fulfilling lives.
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