Community Partnership, Outreach and Education Core (CPOEC)

ABSTRACT/SUMMARY: COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP, EDUCATION, AND OUTREACH CORE The PEACE Center’s Community Partnership, Outreach and Education Core (CPOEC) will be an integral part of the proposed center and will help guide and direct all aspects of the Center’s activities to ensure equitable benefit from innovative research findings. The CPOEC will engage all Center components: the Research

Projects, the Executive Committee, Steering Committee, and the Administrative Core. CPOEC activities will accelerate the typical timeline of research by creating dialogue from the outset on research questions that are inherently relevant to key stakeholders, including clinical and public health practitioners as well as patients and

community members. The CPOEC seeks to address the significant health disparities of uterine fibroids (UF), which disproportionately affect Black women, in part as a direct result of discrimination, racial disparities in access to care, as well as differential knowledge and attitudes about UF and their treatment. Engaging the

communities at risk with culturally competent and strategic partnerships is expected to make a significant impact on reducing UF disparities. The overall objective of the CPOEC is to facilitate a new coalition between academic researchers and community organizations and stakeholders with ties to Black women – partnerships that will be

empowered to creatively and organically study ways to address health disparities in uterine fibroids using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach. The activities and products of the CPOEC will be significant to patients, clinicians, and researchers as we currently have limited data on the full spectrum of

challenges faced by those most burdened by UF. The core’s aims were created by our community partners and Community and Stakeholder Advisory Board (CAB). The CPOEC aims are as follows: 1) Establish a community- academic partnership with the capacity to conduct CBPR on UF health disparities and pathways to health equity;

2) Provide UF health education, outreach, and increase community members capacity for CBPR and health equity research via local, regional, national, and social networks; 3) Ensure equitable dissemination of PEACE Center progress and findings; and 4) Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the PEACE community-

academic partnership in equitably engaging all partners.