The primary objective of the Academic-Community Engagement and Dissemination Core (ACED) of the UAB Obesity Health Disparities Research Center (OHDRC) is to build on the existing infrastructure to facilitate academic-community engagement between investigators and stakeholders across the state of Alabama in order to reduce obesity related health disparities between African American and Whites. The ACED Core will implement initiatives and targeted communications to disseminate findings based on our proposed OHDRC approach and framework taking into account stages in the life course, as well as the levels of influence (i.e., individual, interpersonal, community and societal). Specifically, the ACED will: 1) Strengthen and expand existing partnerships and coalitions to build statewide capacity for expansion of an integrated set of initiatives for obesity reduction through healthy eating and physical activity; 2) Implement a ?train-the-trainer? model to replicate healthy eating and active living initiatives designed to serve as engaged dissemination strategies aimed at individual, community and system-level changes across the life course; 3) Conduct targeted dissemination of research-based obesity-related health disparities information using mass and targeted diffusion via communication channels and established stakeholder groups; 4) Assist OHDRC pilot and research project investigators in identifying and partnering with community organizations to inform their research and disseminate findings and 5) Continuously monitor and assess the outcomes of engagement and dissemination activities. Our approach of active community engagement in developing, implementing, and disseminating community specific obesity initiatives will help individuals and communities use research findings in practical, scalable and sustainable ways. This approach capitalizes on the processes and infrastructure we developed through the COE P60 and the Mid-South TCC U54 to improve outcomes related to healthy eating and physical activity and to strengthen the applicability of our research efforts, thereby increasing the return on these previous NIH investments while building community capacity and transferring research findings into practice.
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| Ejima, K; Pavela, G; Li, P et al. (2018) Generalized lambda distribution for flexibly testing differences beyond the mean in the distribution of a dependent variable such as body mass index. Int J Obes (Lond) 42:930-933 |
