Contents
- Cover Story
Engaging Communities
Critical Resources
Engaging Communities
Changing the Face of Medicine
Aguilar-Gaxiola also co-chairs the CTSA consortium’s Community Engagement Steering Committee along with Lloyd Michener, director of the Duke Center for Community Research at Duke University Medical Center (see related story). “The goal of the committee is, first of all, to bring attention to the importance of reaching out to communities, to have meaningful input from community organizations, and to use them as partners,” explains Aguilar-Gaxiola. “We are finding ways to facilitate bidirectional communication by sharing knowledge, expertise, and resources.”
The committee is developing a series of workshops over the next year to share best practices among CTSA-funded institutions. The ultimate goal is to promote co-learning and collaboration across sites. The first workshop, entitled “Accelerating the Dissemination and Translation of Clinical Research into Practice,” is scheduled for May 9, 2008, on the NIH campus in Bethesda. It is jointly sponsored by NCRR and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. (For more information, visit www.aptrweb.org/workshops.)
The knowledge that will emerge from these workshops will benefit not only CTSA institutions but also all researchers involved in community-based programs. In addition to NCRR, several NIH institutes and other organizations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, will strive to engage all communities in biomedical research and health delivery.
“People go into medicine to make a difference,” says Montgomery Rice. “But you cannot change the face of medicine unless you impact your community. You can be the top institution in terms of research and NIH grants, but if you don’t impact the community, what is the benefit of being number one?”
