The Duke Exploratory Center for Research on Health Promotion in Older Minority Populations is organized to conduct multidisciplinary pilot research and interventions and to initiate programs of health education and community outreach aimed at improving the health status of older African Americans. The overall theme of our Exploratory Center (EC) will be basic and clinical research on psychosocial and behavioral aspects of hypertension in older blacks. The unifying conceptual framework for the Duke EC is the contextual model for hypertension in African Americans as proposed by Anderson and colleagues. The Duke EC will be based in the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, an all- university multidisciplinary program, and be part of Dukes Program on Health, Behavior and Aging in Black Americans. The Duke EC will take advantage of the rich resources of the Duke University Medical Center, the Duke Aging Center, the Durham VA GRECC, Duke's Behavioral Medicine Research Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center, and other affiliated programs. The Duke EC will involve research on hypertension in older blacks that encompasses epidemiological, basic laboratory, interventional, and community outreach studies. The projects will be supported by an Administrative Core that will provide overall coordination and fiscal administration of the EC, will coordinate subject recruitment, psychosocial and physiological assessments, and will establish a foundation for the long-term involvement of local older blacks in a fully- functioning Research Center. To accomplish these goals, we have assembled a multidisciplinary, multi-ethnic, and multi-institutional research team. It is a collaboration between a major national research institution (Duke), the oldest state-supported historically black university in the United States (North Carolina Central University), and a grassroots African American community health promotion organization (The Durham Community Health Coalition Project).
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