Contents

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CTSAs IN FOCUS

SCIENCE ADVANCES

Research Briefs

News from NCRR

Critical Resources

Engaging Communities

Focusing on Women’s Health

Listening to and becoming familiar with the needs of the Nashville area community has been a focus for the research at Meharry Medical College for years. “We do a lot of focus groups to assess the concerns of people in our community,” says Valerie Montgomery Rice, senior vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.

At a recent focus group, Meharry researchers asked parents how they felt about sharing information with their children about a vaccine to protect against the most common types of human papillomavirus—a virus transmitted by sexual contact that can, in some cases, cause cervical cancer in women and other kinds of cancers in both men and women. “We learned that parents were not concerned that talking about the vaccine would make their children more likely to engage in risky behavior,” says Montgomery Rice. “Their main concern was a misapprehension that the vaccine would cause them to get the disease.” She added that it is important for clinical researchers to know their communities and not make assumptions about their needs or concerns.

To better address the community’s needs, particularly those of women, Montgomery Rice spearheaded the creation of the Center for Women’s Health Research—the nation’s first research center devoted exclusively to understanding why African American women are at greater risk for certain diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and HIV/AIDS, and how biology, race, and economics contribute to health disparities in women.

“The center was conceived out of the idea that lots of people at Meharry were doing research in women’s health disparities, but they were not connected,” says Montgomery Rice, the center’s executive director. “If you really want to focus on a bench-to-bedside effort, you need to have a physical structure to allow for basic and clinical researchers to come together.”

Funded with grants from NCRR and NIH’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Center for Women’s Health Research is a 10,000-square-foot facility, of which about one-third is dedicated to laboratory space for researchers in the areas of reproductive biology; cell, molecular, and developmental biology; and HIV. The center also includes several cores, including radiology, exercise and nutrition, hormones, and behavior.

“The behavior core is unique,” explains Montgomery Rice. “This is where we answer the hard questions, such as ‘Why do women make the choices they do that put them at increased risk for diseases?’” And because obesity is an important factor in many diseases affecting African American women, the center emphasizes nutrition and exercise. All women who participate in a study at the center have access to the center’s exercise facility and to fitness and nutrition counseling.

The Center for Women’s Health Research—one of many programs at Meharry with a strong community component—will now have access to additional resources provided by the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, which was established through an NCRR CTSA in 2007 awarded to Vanderbilt University in partnership with Meharry Medical College. The CTSA builds on a decade-old alliance between the two institutions.

One of the CTSA’s roles will be to educate more researchers about what community engagement entails. “Many researchers still think community engagement is only community-based participatory research,” says Marino Bruce, an associate professor in the department of family and community medicine at Meharry, who co-directs the community engagement core of the CTSA. “It is not just about recruiting people to a clinical trial. Translation is about people having a conversation. And just like language translation, it is not just the words that matter but also the context.”