The Center for Bridging Research, Innovation, Teaching and Education Solutions for Minority Health (BRITE) is an academic-community partnership dedicated to eliminating health disparities in our diverse Los Angeles community and the nation. The BRITE Center for Minority Health draws on the expertise of UCLA and its diverse community partners to increase the number of individuals from health-disparity populations who are trained to conduct minority health and health disparities research participate in intervention, prevention and clinical trials research, and engaged in improving the health of their communities through sustained partnerships, workforce development and early detection screening activities. It has four strategic goals. 1) We will build on our strengths to provide an integrated, research home that facilitates and supports new and continued research on the health of racial/ethnic minorities and minority health disparities. 2) We will create effective, new community partnerships to conduct essential, leading-edge research with the tangible goal of improving minority health and reducing or eliminating health disparities. 3) We will initiate, improve, and strengthen existing research education and training activities to build a culturally competent healthcare workforce that will improve health and create living wage employment in health-disparities populations. 4) We will strengthen, increase and broaden partnerships between community and academic centers of knowledge to facilitate efficacious approaches to improve the health and health care services of racial/ethnic minority populations and eliminate health disparities. We will achieve these goals through Research Studies that address two big problems in our health-disparities populationKorean youth cigarette smoking and diabetes in African American womenand utilize cutting-edge, cost-effective and easily scalable health technology innovations for which UCLA is known. LA is an ethnic media capital and we have formed unique media partnerships to reach our population. Our community partners are involved and engaged in study design and recruitment, training, dissemination and implementationactivities that will increase their capacity for research, improve minority health, build a culturally competent workforce, and create jobs.
Los Angeles is the largest and among the most diverse counties in the U.S., with 16% of households 100% below the federal poverty line, making it an ideal laboratory for health-disparities research. The high unemployment among our minority population brings an added urgency to our Center's work, which will improve health while creating jobs. As the U.S. becomes more diverse, our successes will provide a template for better health and opportunities for all health-disparities populations, a Healthy People 2020 goal.
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