The Community Outreach and Information Dissemination Core will be implemented through a partnership between UAB Minority Health and Research Center, the Center of Urban Missions (a faith-based organization that works primarily with underserved African Americans in Jefferson County, AL), and B and D Cancer Center (a not-for-profit community based organization that promotes primary and secondary cancer services to low-income individuals in Macon County, AL). Its primary goal is to develop, implement, and evaluate a Community Action Plan (CAP) to reduce/eliminate health disparities between African Americans and white individuals in the targeted communities (Jefferson and Macon counties), particularly with regard to colorectal cancer and diabetes, in addition, we will work closely with our Research Core in evaluating the impact of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination on health outcomes and with the Training Core in order to engage their trainees in the community health promotion activities. Such program will be implemented through a careful planned process based on the community empowerment and community partnership approaches. Under these approaches, community partners, along with academic partners, will share responsibilities, and priorities and solutions will be implemented in partnership rather than placing academicians or health care professionals in decision-making roles for the community. The first step will consist of coalition building in which the partners and other community members will come together to determine what, when, where, and how the program will be implemented. Through these discussions, coalition members will determine the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out the established mission - reduction of health disparities. The next step will consist of listening to community members on what their priorities are in terms of reducing/eliminating health disparities through qualitative assessments. Once the needs and assets are determined, a Community Action Plan will be developed by the coalition members and """"""""sanctioned"""""""" by the community. This plan will be implemented as a group effort between the coalition and community health advisors with the latter being the back-bone of its implementation since they are the trusted individuals in their communities. We will also assist in the refinement and pilot-testing of assessment instruments used by the research programs as well as dissemination of research findings to the targeted communities.
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