This proposal seeks to renew the Oklahoma Center for American Indian Diabetes and Health Disparities locally known as the American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center (AIDPC). The local name serves to emphasize the focus on prevention, be consistent with its administrative home in the College of Public Health, and differentiate it from an all populations diabetes center on campus. The AIDPC will impact all of the 37 federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma and have a special focus on two of the largest tribes in the United States, the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations of Oklahoma (See Figure 1). This Center is a widely multi-disciplinary, cross-college organization designed to harvest a significant range of scienfific paradigms, special areas of expertise, and research methods all focused on the amelioration of diabetes health disparifies among American Indian (Al) people. To further enhance these resources, a new action element will address the need to convert this multi-disciplinary group into an effective interdisciplinary unit The AIDPC has as its operafional philosophy that: 1) All people are inherently valuable. 2) Excess morbidity, mortality, and community disruption is unacceptable. 3) Cultural diversity is a posifive force. 4) Health disparity solutions will be collaborative, interdisciplinary, and bioculturally oriented. With these foundational themes, Al diabetes health disparities can be engaged through exploratory research attacking several interconnected problems among the younger generation of American Indian people.
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