This is a request for research supplement funding for an active NCI grant in response to PA-18-906, i.e., a request to support the research training of a new faculty investigator who is a member of an underrepresented group. The supplement is to provide salary funding, and funding for travel to take advantage of additional training opportunities for Dr. Sierra Carter, an outstanding African American female Scholar with exceptional promise to the field of translational preventive health. Dr. Carter's expertise regarding depression in response to chronic stressors, particularly discrimination experiences, and their role in forecasting longer-term negative health outcomes will expand the current Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) project and the investigative team. FACHS is the largest panel study of African American families (N ~900) conducted to date. It has acquired a wealth of information about the health of these family members, including multiple biomarkers of their health status and the ?weathering? they have experienced. The opportunities afforded by the current proposal to work with this project and this data set will provide Dr. Carter with a number of career development possibilities. We outline a career development plan to expand Dr. Carter's current knowledge and skills in the study of mechanisms underlying health and health behavior outcomes among young adult African Americans. Through her graduate training, Dr. Carter has acquired a strong foundation in clinical and health research. She received postdoctoral training in translational prevention research at Emory School of Medicine and is now an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University. The current proposed research and training experiences build directly upon her graduate and post-graduate research. The primary goal of this research supplement and career development plan is to expand her research skill set to include new techniques in examining methylation-based mechanisms linking social influences with health and health behavior, as well as expand her skills in congruent statistical methods to handle methylation-based data. This new training will be a natural extension of her current training in understanding the social origins of health disparities with a particular focus on the impact of discrimination in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.
The current proposal to supplement R01CA220254 in response to PA-18-586 is designed to provide career development and expanded training opportunities for an exceptional junior researcher, allowing her to utilize data from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) project. The career development plan and proposed research support the primary Aims of the parent project and facilitate contact and mentoring activities between current project-affiliated faculty and Dr. Sierra Carter. The proposed training and research are natural extensions of her current interests and will facilitate the continued development of her program of research on the role of discrimination in the development of health disparities across the lifespan.
