We plan to reduce health disparities in HIV/AIDS and HPV/Cervical Cancer (at near epidemic levels nationally and at crisis proportions among youth and young adults in the minority community) by building on an existing collaboration between the University of South Carolina's (USC), Arnold School of Public Health, College of Nursing, and School of Medicine;and Claflin University (CU) and Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities (IPEHD). Our EXPORT proposal provides an opportunity to create a focused collaborative research partnership utilizing the strengths of CU and USC to systematically address areas not currently being researched in our state (and the nation) by South Carolina's two funded EXPORT projects. Principal objectives are to: advance the science directed toward reducing, eliminating or preventing health disparities;discover new interventions and expand utilization/adaptation of existing evidenced-based interventions;increase the number of researchers and professionals from minority and medically underserved populations trained in biomedical and behavioral research by building capacity at a minority-serving institution;increase the quality of the training provided to biomedical and behavioral researchers and professionals conducting research on health disparities and increase the public trust, and dissemination and utilization of scientific and health information relevant to health disparity populations.
Specific Aims are to: promote the conduct of research to reduce health disparities;build capacity for health disparities research in minority-serving institutions;promote participation of health disparities groups in biomedical and behavioral research prevention and intervention activities, community-based activities, and translational research activities centered on minority populations in the community or student populations;and foster broad, inter-institutional, collaborative, multidisciplinary investigation that increases project effectiveness and impact by combining the talent, commitment, and leadership across partner institutions. Health disparities are among the most complex and intractable public health problems threatening our state and nation. In South Carolina, state-specific data show abysmally high rates of low birth weight babies, stroke, cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes and HIV/AIDS with disproportionately high numbers of African Americans suffering and dying from these diseases and conditions. The strengths and capacities that our partnership brings to this project will be essential to its success and worthiness of being replicated nationwide.
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