The Center for Healthy Native Communities at Oregon Health and Sciences University is designed to address the health promotion and chronic disease prevention needs of regional tribal and other underserved communities through community-based participatory research, and through training, dissemination, and evaluation activities. The regional tribes, as well as our partner Native Hawaiian communities, clearly represent underserved groups with growing needs related to disease prevention and health promotion. Our Center's activities will begin in these special populations, but will grow to include other underserved populations in the region. Our innovative initial core projects, defined by the tribal communities in which they will be conducted, are focused on disability prevention related to vision and hearing loss---new areas for community-based prevention research. The goals of our center include: 1) develop sustainable collaborative partnerships withcommunity-based, voluntary, and governmental organizations; 2) build research capacity for chronic disease prevention among all partners through training programs, mentoring, and provision of technical assistance; 3) conduct high quality, community-driven prevention research that will translate into policy or practice in the target communities;4) establish our Center as a regional resource for public health research; 5) foster population health sciences and prevention sciences within OHSU as a major research agenda through offering seminars, lectures, and conferences focused on community health; and 6) reduce the disease burden due to specific chronic diseases that the communities have identified as priorities for prevention research. Our many interested community partners, our strong research and training track record with underserved populations, and our depth and breadth of research collaborators and public health partners-including Lions Club Sight and Hearing Foundation--will help to ensure the success of our Center in reaching its goals.
