Texas Hispanics and African Americans have a 2.5-fold higher death rate from diabetes than non-Hispanic whites, nearly 2-fold higher death rate from cardiovascular diseases, and nearly 2-fold increase in death from Cancer. Coupled with these increased disease rates, the minority population in Texas has surpassed the non-Hispanic population in 2004, and the minority population is projected to increase substantially in the coming years. Hispanic groups are the fastest growing minority population in North Texas. Since the 1990 Census, the Hispanic population in Tarrant and Dallas counties in Texas has more than doubled. With the growing Hispanic population in Texas, public health interventions are needed to address the health of these underserved ethnic populations. One of the Healthy People 2010 goals is to reduce health disparities and improve the health status of various socioeconomic and ethnic groups in the U.S. The mission of the outreach core is to design, implement, and test a series of strategies and establish an organizational structure for the promotion of systematic community outreach activities and for the effective dissemination of information to a diverse group of partners and constituents as a means of enhancing our capacity for conducting research, educating students, and enhancing community relationships in the context of the most important strategy, that of preventing Deducing or eliminating health disparities. Our goal is to serve as a resource for the community communities to disseminate health information, promote community participation in health education and research, and to implement disease prevention activities to prevent, reduce or eliminate health disparities. To achieve this goal and in order to foster inclusiveness and promote the efficient use of diverse professional resources, four initiatives will direct the activities of the core. Each of these initiatives will focus on specific issues related to the basic aims of the community partnership/outreach component. The four initiatives are: (1) Agency Coalitions; (2) Promotores de Salud Initiative; (3) Youth Outreach Collaborative and; (4) Media Initiative. We expect the community outreach core to be an integral part of the Texas EXPORT Center, and we envision extensive interaction with the Research Core and Education/Training Core in integrating the community outreach activities towards reducing or eliminating health disparities.
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