Outreach Core

Columbia University Health Sciences, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

OUTREACH RECRUITMENT & ENGAGEMENT (ORE) CORE PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT. The ORE Core plays an essential role in achieving the proposed goals of the Columbia ADRC by meeting the outreach, engagement, recruitment, and retention needs of the ADRC, focused especially on our local Northern Manhattan community. In the previous cycles of the Columbia ADRC, the ORE Core has successfully met recruitment, outreach, and engagement goals, including the recruitment of ADRC participants from groups that reflect the different populations of Manhattan overall. In the current application, the Columbia ADRC will focus on increasing the representation of NIH-designated at-risk population in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) research and in clinical trials. Accordingly, our overall goal will be to serve as a liaison between the local lay community and the ADRC, and to facilitate changes in the research infrastructure towards best health practices for the broader Columbia ADRD research community. To help meet these goals, and to continue to meet the outreach, recruitment, and engagement needs of our local Northern Manhattan, larger New York, and national communities, we propose four initiatives: 1) Develop a registry of adults interested in research participation that are representative of the surrounding communities. By leveraging the heterogeneity of the neighborhoods surrounding CUIMC, we will support a registry of older adults in studies of AD/ADRD. This registry will significantly help increase the generalizability of ongoing research studies at Columbia and more largely through the ADRC network. 2) Increase community education. Our educational outreach activities will focus on reducing ADRD stigma, emphasizing brain health and risk mitigation, improving health literacy related to ADRD biomarkers and clinical trials. 3) Develop a Healthy Brain Aging Community Advisory Board (CAB). The goal of our CAB will be to support increased engagement, outreach, and education in the community as it brings groups together to build research from the ground up. In addition, we will advertise our CAB broadly to ADRD investigators at Columbia to encourage investigators to join a meeting and present to our Healthy Brain Aging CAB. 4) Influence ADRD research infrastructure towards brain health practices. Recruitment strategies for at-risk populations have largely emphasized changing the behaviors and motivation of the individual participant rather than on changes in research design and methods that emphasize addressing obstacles to research participation. By collaborating with various educational programs and centers at CUMC such as with Narrative Medicine, and the ADRC Research Education Component (REC), we will provide various activities to increase the bi-directional relationship between investigators at Columbia with members of the community to inform best health research practices. We are confident that the Columbia ADRC ORE Core can continue to meet the evolving needs of the Columbia ADRC and the larger ADRD scientific community, including the continued involvement, engagement, and recruitment of participants from NIH-designated at-risk populations.