Project Summary
The proposed project will involve diverse stakeholders to develop capacity to engage in patient-centered research with low-income Latino community members in Albuquerque, NM, to improve understanding of patient options for diabetes prevention and care. Community members (including patients and caregivers), community health workers (CHWs), healthcare providers, a managed care organization, community organizations, and researchers from the University of New Mexico will participate in the process. In particular, we will connect stakeholders from three clinic systems that have independently developed diabetes prevention and management activities and services. We have created a Core Project Team to provide guidance for this process.
A key component of the project will be to establish a Community Board (CB) with community members from all three sites. Members of the Core Project Team will meet regularly with the CB to develop their understanding about the research process and to incorporate their input and insights into developing a comparative effectiveness research (CER) question and design a PCORI project. We will convene a larger group of stakeholders for the CB members to present their ideas and involve them in refining a concept for research. We will work with the CB and stakeholders' group to develop a communications infrastructure that will be appropriate in terms of language, culture, literacy, and technology.
Our history of collaboration with community members around solving health problems, and our experience with the co-Principal Investigator in conducting diabetes research (including developing questions, gathering data, analyzing results, presenting findings, and preparing publications), make us likely to have success.