V. Community Engagement, Dissemination & Implementation Core (CEDI) El Centro's Community Engagement, Dissemination & Implementation Core (CEDI) will establish a set of bi-directional and collaborative relationships with key stakeholders in the community to create a network that will identify and utilize health information and practical research findings, and engage the community into clinical trials and projects focused on implementation of evidence-based interventions. This approach is consistent with a Community Based Participatory Research model in which the community is an equal partner in the selection, design and implementation of strategies needed to identify, prevent, reduce and eliminate HD in our community. The CEDI core will seek to narrow the gap between what has been discovered through research and the community's level of utilization of evidence-based information and practices. Rather than assume that the failure to adopt and implement evidence-based practices is the fault of any one set of entities (e.g., community agencies, academic institutions), the CEDI Core acknowledges, identifies, and attempts to work through the many challenging processes and barriers that make implementation difficult (Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005). The CEDI Core takes full advantage of the scientific expertise of our faculty and academic partners, the large number of struggling (due to severe budget cuts) but committed minority serving agencies and networks in our community, and the diverse populations of South Florida. To accomplish these goals the CEDI Core will rely on the expertise of its Core Director, Dr. Daniel Santisteban, and community participants (described later in this section) in: 1) engaging community partners and hard to reach populations, 2) identifying and sharing health information that is practical and culturally informed, 3) establishing large community-university partnerships, and 4) identifying and engaging national developers of evidence-based practices. The CEDI Core will benefit from the existing network of relationships with multiple stakeholders in the community to create successful translational experiences and to strengthen sustainable mechanisms to prevent and/or eliminate HD. One of the most innovative aspects of the work of the CEDI Core will be to emphasize the use of technology and distance learning capabilities to facilitate engagement and dissemination in the community. Many technological advances are available that can circumvent challenges to information sharing, making technical materials attractive to the community, traditional workshops, and ongoing implementation. The CEDI Core is a new component in El Centro, and therefore no progress report is included in this section. Although a community core was not required in the previous funding period of El Centro, a considerable amount of community work was accomplished. For example, the SEPA study engaged and worked closely with a number of agencies such as Mujer, Hispanic Unity, and the Miami-Dade County Health Department. The CIFTA-Prevention study engaged and worked closely with Regis House. Dr. Gonzalez- Guarda established a very close working relationship with a large community network headed by the Miami- Dade Coordinated Victims Assistance Center (CVAC), dedicated to treatment of domestic violence, and established a Community Advisory Board (CAB), which continues to be engaged. Finally, the CEDI Director, as PI of two NIH-funded studies that are supported by the El Centro research infrastructure, engaged and worked closely with the Thelma Gibson Health Initiative, an agency dedicated to working with the African American community, and Miami Behavioral Health Center (part of Banyan Health Systems), an agency dedicated to working with the Hispanic community. These and many other efforts in the community created the foundation for the CEDI Core.
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