COMMUNITY LIAISON CORE

University Of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

For the past 10 years, our UCLA and Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science scientists have worked in partnership with community leaders in aging on community-based projects aimed at improving the health and quality of life of minority seniors. With appreciation of our complementary expertise, our academic-community partnerships are based in deep mutual respect and a shared vision for designing and implementing research aimed at improving the health and well-being of minority seniors and eliminating health disparities. Together we have built strong relationships grounded in trust and mutual respect not only between our academic based scientists and our vast network of community partners, but also between our team and several valuable NIH-funded centers including Project EXPORT, the UCLA Claude D. Pepper Older Adults Independence Center, the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, and more recently, the NIA-funded L.A. Community-Academic Partnership for Research in Aging (L.A. CAPRA) Center and the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). As documented in the progress report of this application enumerating the manuscripts, grants, and careers CHIME has launched, our diverse CHIME team knows how to successfully collaborate in a bi-directional manner to deploy research projects and mentor the next generation of minority aging scientists. The overall goal of CHIME is to contribute to the reduction of health disparities affecting African-American, Latino and other minority elders by training and mentoring minority junior faculty who will advance their academic and research careers by conducting research on minority elderly populations in the greater Los Angeles Area. The CLC provides an integral role in achieving this goal and consists of a team of academic based scientists and community leaders who work together to achieve the following specific aims: 1) facilitate recruitment of minority seniors for CHIME-supported research projects; 2) increase the scientific knowledge of the most effective protocols for recruiting, enrolling, and retaining minority seniors into research studies utilizing state of the art measures of biological markers of health; 3) develop and test new protocols for community-based collection of biological markers of health among minority seniors; 4) and disseminate findings and research advances most relevant to our community partners to both scientific and lay communities.