The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health proposes to develop the Illinois Public Health Research Fellowship Program to foster health protection research in preparedness and primary prevention across life stages. In keeping with the UIC Great Cities Program, it will emphasize the needs and challenges of urban, higher-risk populations. It will develop a cohort of public health researchers who are well-grounded in their respective disciplines, but who will have established solid research beginnings through a multidisciplinary mentorship program that targets real issues faced by partnering public health departments, including the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Chicago Department of Public Health. The emphasis for this program will be Research to Practice, developing skills to translate basic science research into applied public health practice and to conduct intervention effectiveness research. UIC will build on existing strengths in both community-responsive and community-collaborative research. The program will include leadership from each of the four UIC SPH Divisions, the SPH Dean, and the Director of the UIC Health Research and Policy Centers. Public health departments and the Environmental Justice Advisory Board for SPH will assist in the identification of research needs and will participate in conducting the research itself. Core and collaborating faculty from all divisions will develop and implement coordinated research curricula, interdisciplinary projects and research seminars, and will recruit 12 postdoctoral trainees and 4 doctoral students into four teams. Each team will integrate the major public health scientific disciplines to develop an inter-related set of research projects based in existing research and addressing communityidentified need. To support the doctoral students and post-doctoral trainees, a research core program will expand and coordinate SPH MS and MPH students as a response corps of research assistants for community-based research projects, with central coordination and faculty guidance.
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