TRUSTEES OF TUFTS COLLEGE INC

The Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI)'s Community Engagement (CE) component is committed to fostering creative, reciprocal interactions between communities and researchers necessary for transformative clinical and translational research (CTR). Our growing collaborative efforts with our community partners and the Boston University and Harvard University CTSAs have led to the emergence of a key finding: if our ultimate goal is for researchers and communities to engage in reciprocal relationships that promote CTR, building community capacity to engage in research must be a key focus. This must be done in a collaborative manner that connects the efforts of geographically based CTSAs. This ARRA funding expands the scope of work detailed in the parent grant (UL1 RR025752, PI: Dr. Harry P. Selker) and will build capacity among our community partners. We will establish an alliance between the Tufts CTSI, Harvard University's CTSC, and two of our pivotal community partners, the Center for Community Health Education, Research, and Service (CCHERS) and the Immigrant Service Providers Group/Health (ISG/H), to create a self-study and face-to-face curricular program, entitled "Fostering Community Partners in Translational Research (FCPTR)," which will target community agencies and health centers. The scientific activity consists of four phases: curriculum development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination. Based on initial focus groups and community meeting findings, we propose to develop and evaluate FCPTR as a "stragetic intervention" to increase community capacity to engage in research. This program is asset-based in that it builds human capital (knowledge and technical skills about the research process), provides organizational resources (stipends to organizations to participate), and nurtures social capital (new relationships between community organizations and researchers as well as between community organizations). Targeted community partners will include community members and representatives from community organizations and clinical practice settings that are able to bridge and negotiate both research and community systems. We thus hypothesize that by intentionally leveraging human and social capital through the program supported by this funding, we will promote improved knowledge of the research process and foster additional ties, ultimately increasing the capacity of individual participants, their host organization, and their host organization's members to engage in research.

Clarification of Codes