Training Program

University Of Miami School Of Medicine, Coral Gables FL

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Chief among the overarching goals of Healthy People 2010 was the elimination of health disparities.(1) Building on these national goals, in 2002, the Institute of Medicine issued a landmark report on health disparities.(2)3,4 The report outiined numerous recommendations to address inequalities, chief among these were for continued research on disparities (recommendations 7.1, 7.4, 8.1 and 8.2). Parallel to such calls for increased research on health disparities, has been the realization that there remains a tremendous gap between knowledge produced through conventional research and the translation of this research into interventions and policies to improve the health of various groups, especially minority communities. Thus, the Institute of Medicine also called for forging of collaborative research partnerships between academic investigators and communities affected by such disparities through which local knowledge in the understanding and prioritizing of health disparities is employed in the design of interventions.^,* This approach often called Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) employs community members as equal partners in the research process and increases the value of studies for both researchers and representatives of the community being studied so that they are invested in the dissemination and use of research findings and ultimately in the reduction of health disparities.^,¿ Already several recent RFA's by the NIH have explicitly focused on CBPR. However, one often overiooked aspect of health disparities problems are the limited number of well-trained competitive researchers in biomedical and behavioral sciences trained in both health disparities and CBPR methodologies.^^