Community Engagement Core

Community Engagement Core – Abstract Infusing principles of Community-Partnered Participatory Research, the primary goals of the Rutgers-NYU Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity Community Engagement Core (CEC) are to: 1) organize and nurture academic-community partnerships focusing on Asian Adults; 2) facilitate the recruitment and retention of

diverse Asian adults into intervention research on cardiometabolic and mental health research; 3) and build a reciprocal and sustainable community-partnered infrastructure in order to bridge knowledge gaps and disseminate evidence-based best practices at community, state and national levels to inform practice and policy.

New Jersey and New York are the ideal setting for an Asian-focused center on health equity intervention research, as it has one of the most diverse and densely populated Asian Populations in the US. Our P50 Center and the CEC led by MPIs Gaur (Rutgers), Ea (NYU), and Chan (Hunter) are founded on decades of our

assembled investigators’ deep engagement and research with a wide range of Asian populations and will create the essential infrastructure to catalyze an increase in the much-needed research and scientific workforce development necessary to reduce disparities among and improve the health of Asian populations.

To accomplish this, we propose a multi-level strategy that optimizes recruitment, retention, and dissemination through the following specific aims: 1) Leveraging Community-Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR) and communication theories to systematically prepare Rutgers-NYU CAHPE to engage and communicate effectively; 2) Build a sustainable and collaborative community steering committee (CSC)

connecting community and academic institutions for community-partnered, action-oriented health promotion research in Asian adult populations; 3) Expand community-partnered research capacity amongst faculty and Asian community members through culturally appropriate, community-tailored, reciprocal education and training

in biomedical and behavioral research to fully understand the health needs and barriers, challenges, socio- cultural context of conducting research in and with Asian communities; 4) Facilitate the recruitment and retention of Asian adults, through culturally and linguistically appropriate research literacy support tool; and 5) Translate

the research findings of the pilot and center projects at community, state, regional and national levels to inform practice and policy in coordination with other CAHPE cores and with National NIH Centers and other Asian population research centers. Through these systematic approaches and based on our deep community and

ethnographic experiences over the last decade, our Rutgers-NYU CAHPE will begin to fill the dire gap in translational research, implementation and dissemination focused on chronic comorbid conditions amongst U.S. Asians.