This proposal is to continue the work of the Center for Community Health Development (CCHD) at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health in engaging the community and community partners in research, evaluation, training, and dissemination activities aimed to build community capacity for health improvement and reduce health disparities. The mission of the Center is to work collaboratively with communities and other partners to translate, evaluate, and disseminate effective individual, organizational, community and regional strategies for addressing critical health-related issues in rural and underserved populations. The Center's activities planned for 2009-2014 will strengthen research capacity of the School of Rural Public Health and other components of the Texas A&M System and expand of health promotion and disease prevention research activities and projects. Anticipated outcomes include strengthening the prevention research and public health workforce through training and research experience;broader dissemination of a community health development model;and expanded community interventions. The research agenda of the CCHD is organized around three broad themes: (1) factors affecting community members'access to resources and services necessary to promote health and healthy behavior;(2) the use of community health development as one approach to addressing community health issues and the dissemination of prevention knowledge;and (3) identifying contextual factors that affect our ability to disseminate community health development processes and prevention knowledge to other rural and underserved communities. The proposed core research project addresses the first of the Center's three broad themes with its focus on access to healthy affordable food and nutritional security. The second and third themes will be addressed through the study of the community health development process upon which this initiative is based.
The Center for Community Health Development's research will contribute to the field of public health by improving our understanding of community factors affecting health and refinement of the community health development approach to building community capacity for population health improvement. Focusing on the reduction of health disparities for rural and underserved populations, a community-driven research agenda will assist in development of appropriate, relevant interventions sustainable at the local level.
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