This proposal is for the competitive renewal of the Institutional National Research Service Award at the University of Pennsylvania to continue and expand a predoctoral and postdoctoral research training program. We will build on our successes from the first award period which include: 1) successful recruitment of minority researchers (44% of our predoctoral fellows and 40% of our postdoctoral fellows are minority researchers); 2) success in filling all positions; 3) establishment of interdisciplinary teams to support fellow research; 4) education of fellows that has resulted in research to improve the health of vulnerable populations, dissemination of this research and extramural funding of this research. In this application, we are refining our focus and concentrating on research training on the most vulnerable populations, minorities who experience well-documented health disparities. We will train nurse scientists to study disparities related to access, culturally influenced health behaviors, utilization, and funding of appropriate care, as well as disparities related to perceptions of difficult client-provider relationships. Our goal is to prepare nurse scientists to conduct culturally competent research designed to improve health and thus to decrease health disparities in vulnerable populations. Our broad conceptualization of health disparities of vulnerable populations is consistent with the research of the faculty for this proposed training program. Our faculty has pioneered unique approaches to the study of vulnerable populations at risk for health disparities and has been very successful in recruiting minority nurse researchers in the first five years of funding for this training grant. The proposed focus on health disparities among the most vulnerable allows for a rich interaction among the trainees and faculty studying health disparities within a broad range of research specialties. The predoctoral program provides beginning researchers with the knowledge and skills to conceptualize and implement clinical research designed to reduce health disparities among vulnerable women, children, and families. ? ? The predoctoral program builds on the current doctoral program by providing additional course work, focused seminars, mentorship, and experiences with researchers nationally and at Penn who are working to reduce health disparities, and provides research experience with ongoing studies. This is in addition to the concentration courses that provide the scientific background in the content area of each student's doctoral work and the required core courses and research courses that focus on contemporary nursing knowledge, research methods, and statistics. The purpose of the postdoctoral program is to facilitate independent research designed to reduce health disparities in vulnerable women, children and families; to develop the abilities of nurse trainees in specific content areas by engaging them in research with faculty; to encourage trainee publication; and to enable trainees to terminate the program with a fundable research proposal. Funds are requested for four new predoctoral and four new postdoctoral trainees each year, for two years of fellowship. ? ? ?
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