The Native Elder Research Center (NERC) will be organized in terms of four core components: an Administrative Core (Core D). Candace Fleming, Ph.D., Associate Director for Training, NCAIAMHR, Program Co-Director, NPO/HNI, and Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UCHSC, will serve as a Senior investigator and will lead the Community Liaison Core. Dr. Fleming, a clinical psychologist, is American Indian (Kickapoo/Oneida/Cherokee), and is nationally recognized for her clinical work, program experience, policy efforts, and advocacy in areas directly relevant to this RCMAR, particularly at the local, community-based level. Core B will provide varying levels of direction and support--both day-to- day and long-term-- to each of the other cores in facilitating their linkage to the primary constituents of the NERC.
The specific aims of this Core are to: 1) employ existing community partnerships to facilitate the planning, conduct, and dissemination of high quality research that promises to reduce the differential in health status and access to care that separate naive and non-Native elders; 2) transfer the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes to Native and non-Native Investigators to enable them to build their own working relationships with the same or similar community partners; 3) bring community partners more fully into the process of selecting study questions, of framing the research designs, of assisting in the identification and operationalization of key constructs, and data collection; 4) develop and improve mechanisms for disseminating the results of research at the interface of health, aging, and culture, so that there is greater likelihood of more immediate application ofr the benefit of the local populace, and 5) demonstrate that scientific merit, applicability of research, and subsequent advocacy ar not mutually exclusive, but rather can be combined in a synergistic fashion that enhances the value of each.
These aims follow directly from the current philosophy of the DAIANP, and suggest important guideposts for developing a meaningful research agenda that will attract and sustain the participation of Native elders, their families and communities in an enterprise that can benefit all parties. The proposed program will maintain an immediate, ongoing presence in each of the four AI/AN communities that serve as the context for Pilot Studies entailing primary data collection. The presence capitalizes on DAIANP field offices that already exist in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Ogala Sioux Tribe, the Navajo Nation (NN), and the Cherokee Nation: the largest tribal groups in the U.S. A new field office (SIHBFO) is being established near the Seattle Indian Health Board, the country's largest, most comprehensive urban Indian health program.
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