Cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes are the most common health problems in the US and a major cause of health disparities for African Americans. The Austin neighborhood is an 118,000 person community located on the west side of Chicago. The Austin population is 90% African American, with 46% of residents living below twice the federal poverty level. Westside Health Authority (WHA) is a community-based organization that was established in 1988 to empower residents of the Austin neighborhoods and to help them stay healthy, through better health behaviors related to health promotion and disease prevention. The purpose of this application is to develop a partnership between WHA and Northwestern University for the purpose of community-based participatory research (CBPR). This collaboration will build upon WHA's early work in the Healthy Lifestyles Progam (HLP) by working toward increasing community capacity for conducting their own research, intervention programs, and evaluations, all with the purpose of substantively improving the health of the Austin Community. The application is based on four specific aims.
Aim 1. To build a sustainable partnership between WHA, the Austin community and researchers from NU for action oriented health promotion research.
Aim 2. to conduct a community needs assessment around the issue of healthy lifestyles.
Aim 3. To build community based research capacity through community-focused education and training in research design, methods and dissemination. Finally, Aim 4. To design, refine and pilot test a research protocol around the Healthy Lifestyles Program in Austin to be conducted by WHA with community-involvement. The final product of this application will be the development of a research application for a large community-based randomized control trial of the Healthy Lifestyles Program. ? ?
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