UCLA-UCI Center for Eliminating Cardio-Metabolic Disparities in Multi-Ethnic Populations (UC END-DISPARITIES)

Project Summary/Abstract P50 UC END-DISPARITIES UC END-DISPARITIES will address the inequitable multilevel factors that promote cardiometabolic disease, including hypertension, diabetes, and complications such as atherosclerotic vascular disease and chronic kidney disease. These conditions are highly influenced by structural disadvantage and disproportionately affect

low-income, minoritized, and other marginalized groups in the highly diverse and contiguous region of Los Angeles County (LAC) and Orange County (OC) (combined population over 13M; > 46 states). The Center will fill a gap in the current efforts to advance health equity via a multilevel community-academic partnered

approach to improve cardiometabolic related health outcomes in targeted LAC and OC Latino, Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian communities, which have some of the highest rates of cardiometabolic risk factors and premature cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in the nation. UC END-DISPARITIES will

function through three highly integrated cores and three inaugural center research projects across southern California, all supporting Pilot Awards and Community Catalyst Awards, while leveraging synergies with key community-academic networks, community, public health, and health system stakeholders,

regional networks of minority-serving institutions, centers at UCLA and UCI for clinical and translational science, and methodologic leaders with expertise in health equity research, biostatistics, implementation science, and health information technology. The Administrative Core, Investigator Development Core, and

Community Engagement Core will implement the following Center objectives: 1) Provide administrative and operational support for all activities and collaborate with the NIMHD Chronic Disease Disparities Coordinating Center; 2) Develop the requisite community-academic research infrastructure to improve the

health of the diverse multiethnic communities of LAC and OC through multilevel interventions; 3) Broaden/enhance existing and new partnerships with communities to expand the pool of diverse participants in research and recipients of findings for UC END DISPARITIES and related funded entities; 4) Promote successful training and academic advancement of underrepresented post-doctoral and early

career investigators through mentorship, opportunities to participate in community engaged health interventions, and support of pilot projects and subsequent independent cardiometabolic disparities research; 5) Conduct rigorous analyses and partner with community stakeholders to identify community, health system, family, and individual-level correlates of health disparities to inform research methods,

health policy, and the design of community and health system partnered interventions to mitigate cardiometabolic disparities; and 6) Contribute to the development, evaluation, and dissemination of valid, reliable, and generalizable tools that can measure and track health outcomes and the social, behavioral,

and economic predictors relevant to multiethnic communities at risk for cardiometabolic disease.