Center for Latino Health Research Opportunities-CLaRO Administrative Core

Mitrani, Victoria

Abstract

The Administrative Core of the Center for Latino Health Research Opportunities (CLaRO) will oversee and direct the proposed infrastructure for health disparities research, investigator development, and community engagement/dissemination. Over the past 10 years, the two partnering NIMHD Centers of Excellence for the proposed Center, El Centro at the University of Miami (UM) and CRUSADA at Florida International University (FIU), have individually built robust health disparities research infrastructures to support studies that have successfully recruited and retained research participants from marginalized Latino populations. The Management Plan of CLaRO includes a Multi-PI Plan (Mitrani, Contact PI at UM; De La Rosa, PI at FIU) and a set of leadership structures that will effectively guide and coordinate activities, create synergy, and promote partnerships. Senior administrators from UM and FIU will provide oversight and support. CLaRO will be evaluated annually on goals, process, and outcome metrics related to the Aims of the overall Center, each Core, and each Research/Pilot Project. An External Evaluator will conduct site visits and prepare Center Impact Reviews.
The Specific Aims of this Core are to: (1) Oversee, manage, coordinate, support, and evaluate the full range of activities essential to achieving the CLaRO aims; (2) Ensure that CLaRO-supported Research/Pilot Projects have safeguards in place to protect human subjects and are in full compliance with applicable federal regulations and policies; (3) Provide a standard, translated, high quality set of common data elements and measures to be used across supported studies to enable testing of cross-study research questions; (4) Deliver scientific resources and administer/coordinate career enhancement activities to facilitate research and investigator development related to the CLaRO theme; and (5) Ensure the sustainability and expansion of CLaRO activities in the long-term for improving Latino health and scientific workforce diversity. Both partnering Centers of Excellence, led by the PIs of the proposed CLaRO, Mitrani and De La Rosa, have the administrative capacity and experience to lead community and scientific advisory boards, mentorship programs, and grants management operations, and to facilitate grant submission and dissemination activities. Both partnering Centers? administrative cores have facilitated community based participatory research with a myriad of private and governmental clinical and social service organizations?including managing subcontracts and ensuring human subjects protection, data quality, and safety in community based research projects. The proposed collaboration is enhanced by the close proximity of the partnering institutions, which are located only five miles from each other. By uniting forces as CLaRO, we will harness the resources of a private (UM) university and public (FIU) university, and will unite two exceptionally strong networks of community partnerships. As such, the proposed CLaRO will potentiate the investment made by NIMHD in our individual Centers of Excellence to exert a sustained, powerful impact on Latino health research.