In response to PAR-18-749 (R24) to build collaborative teams to improve methods and outcomes regarding research participant recruitment and retention, we propose the New Jersey Minority Aging Collaborative (NJMAC) to improve research recruitment and retention and support culturally targeted and linguistically appropriate research for African American, Hispanic, and Asian older adults and their families. While NJ ranks as the 2nd wealthiest state by per capita income and 12th best in the country for overall health, there is a paradox in considering other population health rankings where New Jersey ranks one of the worst in disparity in health status (46th). For older adults in NJ, there are equally as large disparities when it comes to health and well-being especially among minority older adults, which is exacerbated by a lack of engagement in biomedical and social research. Additionally, there has been inadequate integration of community support necessary to empower minority communities in NJ to be fully engaged in biomedical research. These impediments necessitate further development and implementation of sustainable and equitable partnership among community partners and academic institutions through collaborative development, reciprocal transfer of knowledge, and expertise to improve recruitment and retention among minority older adults. Using an adaptive and reciprocal ?collective impact? design, the NJMAC will leverage and build team- science in NJ through Rutgers Institute for Health and Cooperative Extension in partnership with community organizations to foster trust with minority older adults and achieve greater intergration of community needs and research efforts. With a state-wide infrastructure and track record of culturally relevant community-research engagement, we aim to: 1) Build and sustain research capacity among academic and community partners through building a collaborative community steering committee and explore trust between collaborators to fully understand the barriers, challenges, and racial/ethnic and socio-cultural contexts of conducting research in and with African-American, Hispanic, and Asian aging populations across NJ; 2) Engage community members, their families, and partners through culturally targeted and linguistically appropriate reciprocal education, training, and measurements; manage a research repository to understand and document trust and feasibility of research recruitment and retention; 3) Expand, catalyze, and assess team science as a critical platform for collaborative research on aging populations and leverage an iterative platform for process and outcome evaluation among African-American, Hispanic, and Asian populations; and 4) Translate findings and lessons learned through the NJMAC to inform future academic-community partnerships in aging and AD-ADRD research; collaboratively build research resource to advance processes for recruitment/retention in diverse community settings at local and national levels. Findings and lessons learned will have significant implications for building community-academic research partnerships, culturally relevant research, practice, and policy.
Despite the health disparities of minority older adults, there are vast gaps in approaches to engage these communities in culturally targeted and linguistically appropriate research efforts. In the New Jersey Aging Collaborative, we will build research infrastructure to reciprocal engage community members, their families, community partners, and academic partners throughout New Jersey to improve recruitment and retention of minority older adults and their families in biomedical research. Innovative approaches to build this infrastructure through the NJMAC will provide researchers with a breadth and depth in translational knowledge resources to further novel research, especially in particular areas of clinical and public health relevance like Alzheimer?s disease and Alzheimer?s disease related dementia.
