The state of Florida?s high ethnic and racial diversity provides a unique platform to address an array of scientific and clinical questions to refine our current understanding of how AD+ADRD present and progress among the nation?s diverse cultural groups. Moreover, early detection has become a global priority, given that identifying individuals at-risk for disease during the pre-symptomatic phases may yield the greatest efficacy in emerging treatments in AD+ADRD clinical trials. Thus, the 1Florida Alzheimer?s Disease Research Center has placed a special emphasis on recruiting diverse individuals during the preclinical (preMCI) or prodromal (early MCI) phases, which is of significant value for longitudinal follow up studies. The 1Florida ADRC addresses these major national priorities, represents our demographic landscape, and leverages the scientific expertise of our investigators. The 1Florida ADRC ORE Core?s objectives are to actively facilitate community and professional outreach and education programs so that our Clinical and Neuropathology Cores and affiliated researchers can enroll individuals who are interested in helping develop ways to better assess, treat and prevent AD+ADRD, particularly people from underserved and underrepresented minority communities. We propose to achieve this by i) assembling a racially and ethnically diverse team, ii) further developing, strengthening, and empowering our academic-community partners, iii) developing and implementing culturally appropriate and dual language outreach and educational materials, iv) broadening our communications with stakeholders in a more ?live? manner through in-person reciprocal dialogue, and v) serve as cross-cultural experts to support the training of emerging clinician scientists and other professionals through the REC. In the current application, we are strengthening and expanding our partnerships with a focus on more actively engaging stakeholders from minority communities to be involved in the ?1Florida ADRC Ambassadors Council?. The feedback of our Ambassadors will allow us to implement pragmatic and effective methods for community engagement in the Hispanic and AA communities in a manner that resonates with our diverse cultural groups. Ultimately, the success of our strategies and programs will be reflected in recruitment and retention rates, especially in the specifically targeted diverse populations. The ORE Core will work closely with the Data Management Core and Clinical Core, to deploy tools to capture data that will evaluate all activities. Our success will also be measured by maintaining an engaged and satisfied cadre of Ambassadors that are representatives of our diverse community, as well as a notable expansion of sustained platforms for outreach and education throughout the state. Importantly, the ORE team has significant cross-cultural expertise that will be valuable for providing training to RE component to ensure that our knowledge about effective practices to engage, assess and treat underrepresented minorities is made available to emerging clinician scientists and other ADRC teams that are working with similar populations.
