NIMHD Collaborations

Medical and scientific advances have introduced new opportunities for the continued improvement of health for all Americans. However, in spite of notable improvements gained as a result of the treatment and technological advancement, there continues to be an alarming disproportionate burden of illness among minority and other health disparity populations. Overcoming persistent disparities in healthcare access and health outcomes remains a foremost challenge.

As one of 27 Institutes and Centers at NIH, NIMHD supports research partnerships across NIH and externally with a goal to create synergistic research approaches to improve public health for health disparity populations, including racial and ethnic minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged and geographically underserved populations.

Partnerships conducted and supported by the NIMHD have created innovative studies into how to promote screening for breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers; eliminate barriers to clinical trial recruitment; deliver mental health services; and much more. Some newer initiatives support research on precision medicine, child health studies examining environmental influences and cognitive brain development, and scientific workforce diversity.

Learn about some of these NIMHD collaborations here.

• ABCD Study

  The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study will enroll 10,000+ healthy children and follow them from ages 9 to 10 into early adulthood to understand how children’s experiences affect brain development.

• All of Us Research Program

  This program will build a diverse group of one million U.S. research participants for the study of precision medicine, an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account the differences in genetics, environment, and lifestyle of individual patients when choosing treatments or developing interventions.

• CDC’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program

  Reach is a national initiative that establishes community-based programs and culturally-tailored interventions to eliminate health disparities among African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans, Alaska Natives, and Pacific Islanders. REACH partners use community-based, participatory approaches to identify, develop, and disseminate effective strategies for addressing health disparities across a wide range of health priority areas such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast and cervical cancer, infant mortality, asthma, immunization, and obesity.

• Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce

  This program encourages and supports students from minority and underrepresented populations in pursuing biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social science careers.

• Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program

  This program will support research using existing study populations to investigate the effects of environmental exposures — including physical, chemical, biological, social, behavioral, natural and built environments — on child health and development, focusing on respiratory health, obesity, neurodevelopment, and pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes.

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development’s Add Health Study

  This longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the US during the 1994-95 school year has followed the cohort into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent in 2008, when the sample was aged 24-32. The study combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors in adolescence are linked to health and achievement outcomes in young adulthood.

• Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST)

  FIRST is an NIH Common Fund program to foster sustainable institutional culture change and inclusive excellence. FIRST will establish a faculty cohort model for hiring, multi-level mentoring and professional development paired with systems to address bias, faculty equity and work/life issues. The FIRST Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC) will evaluate impact at faculty and institutional levels; departmental and institutional culture change; and establish initiative-wide metrics of faculty success, recruitment and professional development at pre-tenure career stages.

• Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL)

  HCHS/SOL is a long-term, multicenter study of Hispanic/Latino health and diseases in the United States. The study aims to determine the number of people with heart and lung diseases in various Latino heritage groups and identify risk and protective factors within these groups.

• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Jackson Heart Study

  The Jackson Heart Study (JHS) study is the largest investigation of causes of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in an African-American population, involving 5,300 men and women in Jackson, MS. It is uniquely positioned to investigate CVD risk factors, especially manifestations related to hypertension such as coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, peripheral arterial disease, and renal disease.

• National Institute on Aging’s Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span

  This research program aims to understand the sources of persistent health disparities in overall longevity, cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease. By posing fundamental questions about differences in rates and risks for pathological conditions associated with aging, researchers hope to disentangle the relationship between race, socioeconomic status, and health outcomes. Using mobile medical research vehicles, which serve as community-based platforms for clinical research, researchers are creating effective methods for recruiting and retaining non-traditional research participants into age-related clinical research.

• National Institute on Aging’s Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research

  The Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research mission is to decrease health disparities by: increasing the number of researchers who focus on the health of minority elders; enhancing the diversity in the professional workforce by mentoring minority academic researchers for careers in minority elders health research; improving recruitment and retention methods used to enlist minority elders in research studies; creating culturally sensitive health measures that assess the health status of minority elders with greater precision; and increasing the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve their health and well-being.

• National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases’ Osteoarthritis Initiative

  The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) is a multicenter, longitudinal, prospective observational study of knee osteoarthritis (OA). This Initiative is a public-private partnership between the NIH and private industry that seeks to improve diagnosis and monitoring of OA and foster development of new treatments. The overall aim of the OAI is to develop a public-domain research resource to facilitate the scientific evaluation of biomarkers for osteoarthritis as potential surrogate endpoints for disease onset and progression.

• National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research’s Centers for Research to Reduce Disparities in Oral Health

  This research program aims to understand and eventually eliminate health disparities in dental caries and oral/pharyngeal cancer through collaborations among teams of investigators from diverse disciplines and background in partnership with communities. The Centers for Research to Reduce Disparities in Oral Health are located at Boston University, the University of California, San Francisco, University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Florida, and the University of Washington.

• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' Sister Study

  The Sister Study examines the environmental and genetic risk factors for breast cancer and other health issues in women, as well as factors that influence quality of life and outcomes after breast cancer diagnosis. From 2004 to 2009, more than 50,000 women across the US and Puerto Rico, who were between ages 35–74 and whose sister had breast cancer, joined this landmark research effort to find causes of breast cancer. Because of their shared environment, genes, and experiences, studying sisters provides a greater chance of identifying risk factors that may help us find ways to prevent breast cancer.

• National Institute of General Medical Sciences’ Bridges to the Future Training Programs

  Research training programs that aim to increase the number of community college/ master’s degree students from underrepresented groups and/or health disparity populations who transfer and complete the baccalaureate/PhD degree, respectively, in biomedical and behavioral sciences.

• National Institutes of Health - American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Fellowship in Genomic Medicine Program Management
  The goal of this fellowship is to increase the pool of physicians trained in managing research and implementation programs in 'genomic medicine' (i.e., the use of genomic information as part of an individual patient's clinical care).

• NIH-ACMG Fellowship in Genomic Medicine Program Management
  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in partnership with the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) are seeking qualified physicians interested in acquiring credentials and experience to lead genomic medicine research and implementation programs at the NIH, major medical centers, and other organizations.

• NIMHD-NIDDK-Rwandan Health Program
  This program is a collaborative effort between NIMHD, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the Rwandan Ministry of Health to help build an NIH-trained research workforce in Rwanda. The fellows are physicians who spend a year at NIH and then return home as clinician scientists to conduct research and help improve health of Rwandans.

• PhenX Social Determinants of Health Assessments Collection
  This collection contains the addition of 19 protocols for social determinants of health (SDOH), which expands upon the previous SDOH collection to help measure upstream factors that shape health behaviors and health outcomes. This open-access resource provides standard SDOH measures to better understand causes of health inequities and enable effective interventions to reduce disparities.

• PregSource - A Crowdsourcing Project to Better Understand Pregnancy
  The project will explore physical and emotional aspects of pregnancy, labor and delivery and will identify distinct challenges faced by subgroups of women, such as those with physical disabilities. By offering a more comprehensive picture of the pregnancy experience—from normal pregnancies to those complicated by disease or other factors—PregSource promises to inform strategies for improving maternal care in the United States.

• RESPOND Study
  The Research on Prostate Cancer in Men of African Ancestry: Defining the Roles of Genetics, Tumor Markers, and Social Stress (RESPOND) is the largest coordinated research effort to study biological and non-biological factors associated with aggressive prostate cancer in African-American men. RESPOND is supported by the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

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