COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & OUTREACH CORE PROJECT ABSTRACT All Center projects will work with American Indian (AI) communities, and effective community engagement will be essential to the success of the individual research projects and to the growth of the program. Based on previous community input and priorities, we will investigate the impact of unresolved trauma and resilience on AI health. The multi-disciplinary team will utilize a community-based, participatory research (CBPR) framework. The PD/PI and the Community Engagement & Outreach Core (CEOC) Director are both tribal members from the Dakotas, and they have extensive experience in AI community engagement, including the Indians Into Medicine (INMED) Program. The INMED Tribal Advisory Board, active since 1973, will serve as the CEOC Community Advisory Board. CEOC activities will be coordinated with other COBRE Cores and existing UND IDeA community engagement programs to promote coordination and to avoid duplication of efforts. Objectives The long-term goal of the CEOC is to develop community-based research priorities that can be translated into improved health outcomes. The research strategy will include tribal-specific Inventories of Tribal Research Agendas to improve health status by linking research projects to community priorities. The CEOC's short-term goal is to continue engaging communities and tribal partners through a CBPR framework. 1. Engage communities to identify research priorities. 2. Increase culturally-appropriate research with AI communities through bidirectional outreach and training. 3. Promote dialogue and disseminate findings from Indigenous Trauma & Resilience Research Center activities to tribal stakeholders. Methods: An outreach and engagement plan will be developed through key informant interviews and focus groups to promote COBRE activities in AI communities. The plan will include facilitating all aspects of culturally appropriate and collaborative, community-engaged research. In addition to providing education and training to tribal stakeholders regarding the value of and need for research, we will engage the research community by providing training in culturally appropriate research and tribal community engagement. The process will include using the rETHICS Toolkit on how to appropriately conduct research in tribal communities. A key component of the CEOC will be to implement a communication plan that includes formal processes to facilitate community engagement in interpretation of data and dissemination of findings from COBRE activities. We will also provide summaries of previously conducted research to community stakeholders.
