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Record Count: 3
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header (Title, Principal Investigator, Institution, City, ST, Award Code, or
Pubs).
Neighborhoods impact a host of health outcomes, including infant mortality, the development of asthma and heart disease and life expectancy, independent of personal characteristics. The pathways through which neighborhoods 'get under the skin', are only partly understood. This center will study neighborhood influences on health, focusing on those characteristics of neighborhoods that are potentially amenable to change through changes in public policy. The Center has the following goals:
1) To conduct research to explain how neighborhoods contribute to health throughout the life cycle, including through biological pathways and health behaviors
2) To develop a rich data resource that can be used to advance the understanding of how neighborhoods influence health, and the biological pathways through which such influences work.
3) To develop robust community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnerships within each of the 3 cities in which RAND is located, involving both community-based organizations and academic institutions.
4) To develop and foster a community of interdisciplinary researchers (including social and basic scientists) focused on the social determinants of health, specifically the role of neighborhoods in health.
5) To contribute to improving public policies that can improve population health through a set of policy recommendations that are developed from the results of the Center's research.
The Center, which places a high priority on community-based participatory research, will be composed of 4 projects, 2 pilots, and 2 cores. Projects span 3 levels of analysis: biological, social/environmental, and behavioral/psychological. Project 1 will examine the impact of a large natural experiment involving the development and renovation of recreational facilities on physical activity and other health outcomes. Project 2 will study neighborhood factors that impact the functional and cognitive aspects of the disabling process in the elderly. Project 3 examines the relationships between neighborhoods and biological markers of allostatic load. Project 4 studies the impact of the built environment on mental health. An administrative core will support the entire project. A data and methods core provides data and computing support, and serves as a focus for intellectual activity around measurement and statistical issues.
Crisp Terms/Key Words: health disparity, geographic difference, health services research tag, behavioral /social science research tag, clinical research, socioenvironment, human morbidity
The Wayne State University (WSU) Center for African American Urban Health is a 5-year proposal that consists of five Cores and four Projects with participation of 34 investigators from various Departments, Centers, and Programs across the WSU campus. The Center has invested heavily in coalescing and expanding a shared research infrastructure that is widely accessible to investigators. The four Cores represent specialized areas of expertise and services required to undertake testing of multi-level hypotheses related to research in racial health disparities. These Cores form the foundation of our application. The Cores are: 1) Psychosocial and Community Measures; 2) Recruitment and Clinical Assessment; 3) Biostatistics and Research Database; and 4) Genomics Core. These Cores allow the investigators to test a broader range of Project-specific study hypotheses in a more cost-efficient manner than would be possible with stand-alone Projects. African Americans were selected as the exclusive study population for the Center because of their high burden of obesity-related disease such as breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, heart failure, diabetes mellitus, and coronary heart disease). Also, while Detroit has the third largest population of African Americans, it has the highest percentage (81.6%) of African Americans of any major city in the USA. The four Projects are: 1) Project 1: Obesity, Nitric Oxide, Oxidative Stress and Salt Sensitivity, 2) Project 2: Weight Loss in Breast Cancer Survivors, 3) Project 3: A Dyadic Intervention for Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients, and 4) Project 4: Promotion of Healthy Behavior in African American Women. These Projects are thematically linked through obesity, diet and other lifestyle factors including physical activity, and obesity-related cardiovascular disease and cancer. Our research efforts are focused on understanding the mechanisms operating at multiple levels (environment, lifestyle, physiology, genetics) mediating known disparate chronic conditions and their precursors. We also seek to identify preventive strategies and therapeutic approaches that might alleviate the disproportionate burden of disease. Primary as well as interactive effects of environmental exposures (household and community-level) and psychobehavioral characteristics with physiological measures (e.g., 24-hour BP burden and oxidative stress), genes, and body composition will be explored in relation to their impact on study outcomes.
Crisp Terms/Key Words: health disparity, cardiovascular disorder risk, clinical research, African American, human subject, disease /disorder prevention /control, obesity
The specific aims of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research are to: Aim #1: bring together scientists from inside and outside the University and members of the community who are especially vulnerable to adverse health conditions to inform the Center's scientific agenda; Aim #2: foster investigations that consider health disparities from multiple levels of analysis via shared conceptual frameworks that integrate discipline-specific theories and methods; Aim #3: increase interest in health disparities among scientist and students from various disciplines and from community members; Aim #4: develop measures and methods that are appropriate for use with vulnerable populations and that allow factors at various levels (social/environmental, behavioral/psychological, and biological/genetic) to be
analyzed together; Aim #5: increase existing knowledge on the social, behavioral, and biological factors that influence health disparities and the nature of their interactions; and, Aim #6: disseminate findings through channels established through the Center to as wide an audience as possible, including members of vulnerable populations, community-based organizations and agencies, and scientific investigators inside and outside the University.
In its first five years, the Center will focus on group differences in breast cancer, notably why Black women in the US and West Africa experience breast cancers that occur at a younger age and are more aggressive and lethal than those of White women. McClintock (R01 # 1), based on an animal model of social regulation of mammary tumor biology developed in her laboratory, will compare the gene regulation in mammary tumors and the ovarian function of socially isolated and group-living rats. OIopade (R01# 2) will (a) look at the molecular characterization of primary patient samples in Nigeria and Chicago's South Side to see if alterations in BRCA1 contribute to breast cancer in younger Black women and (b) explore the McClintock model in primary patient samples. Gehlert and Masi (R01# 3; CBPR) will explore emic views of breast cancer and its treatment and test the McClintock model with community volunteers. In the lalffer, they will examine neighborhood and community factors (such as collective efficacy and crime), living situations and social connectedness, behavioral responses (such as vigilance and perceived stress), and biological (e.g., cortisol levels) and health outcomes (most notably breast cancer). Conzen (R01# 4) will study rate of mammary tumor growth, response to chemotherapy, and chemoprevention in two animal models. The Tissue Core will provide analysis of mammary tissue. Coordination and dissemination will occur through the Administrative Core, by means of Faculty Colloquium and Monthly Speaker Series, In-Service and Summer Apprenticeship
programs, a Center Web site and Web page for communication with other CPHHDs, etc.
Crisp Terms/Key Words: breast neoplasm, clinical research, behavioral /social science research tag, health services research tag, health disparity
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