Igniting Hope in Buffalo New York communities: Training the Next Generation of Health Equity Researchers

The organizational and governance structure of our NIMHD Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement (Center of Excellence) is guided by its mission, which is to train and develop the next generation of health disparities investigators to perform innovative research in minority health and health

disparities in partnership with our community and to the benefit of the community. The Center of Excellence will be embedded in the UB Community Health Equity Research Institute (Health Equity Institute), a fully sanctioned university-wide institute founded in 2019 as a direct result of our partnership and collaborations with community

leaders and community members. The Health Equity Institute includes faculty from all 12 schools of the University at Buffalo, providing an immediate connection with researchers and mentors in essentially all disciplines that bring expertise to perform innovative research to address the many social determinants of health.

Estimates are that improving healthcare will reduce disparities in health outcomes by 10 to 20%. It is critical that research addresses the upstream factors that account for these disparities. Another noteworthy feature of our administrative structure is the integration of community leaders as part of the leadership teams of the Center of

Excellence and of each Core, leveraging our influential and far-reaching community-university-government partnership. The Administrative Core will coordinate and manage Center of Excellence activities with a responsive governance and inclusive approach, engaging community participation in the leadership and the work

of the Center (Aim 1). The leadership of the Administrative Core will organize and integrate core initiatives to ensure communication and synergy among cores, while providing expertise and support for maintaining compliance with policies and procedures (Aim 2). With the African American Health Equity Task Force serving

as an “umbrella” group of our community-university-government partnership, the well-attended monthly Task Force meetings are highly effective in ensuring continuous communication and coordination between the Center of Excellence and the community. We will carefully monitor progress toward milestones through evaluation and

continuous quality improvement, while tracking key milestones for processes, productivity, and impact of the work of the Center of Excellence (Aim 3). We will track scholarly outcomes and career trajectory of early-career investigators supported by pilot studies. Our vision is the Center of Excellence will provide training, individualized

mentoring, and professional development to early-stage investigators to substantially increase the number of investigators and leaders in health disparities research. Thus, our Center of Excellence will have enormous impact in our environment to address root causes of health inequities and lead to sustainable system-level

changes in race-based health inequities in Buffalo and nationally through sharing the innovative interventions that our investigators develop and test.