Project Summary
During this Tier I project, we will create the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Research and Clinical Evaluation (CIRRCLE) to build consensus among Kansas City (KC) newcomers (immigrants and refugees) with diabetes mellitus (DM), their community leaders, and healthcare providers regarding DM-related health and healthcare issues and how to investigate them via comparative effectiveness research. Mang Sonna, director of the Bethel Neighborhood Center (BNC), and Dr. Joseph LeMaster, a KC-based primary care provider with experience in community-based participatory and DM-related research, will co-lead the project. Sonna and LeMaster are participants in the PCORI-funded EPPiPCORT project as a patient-provider dyad. In 2014, newcomer community leaders identified diabetes as the issue most concerning to KC newcomer communities’ health, and collaborated with the BNC to conduct healthy lifestyles programs for newcomer seniors and youth. We will use World Café meetings to provide patients and family members from four newcomer communities with a venue to identify and discuss issues regarding challenges to DM self-care and health care, and develop consensus democratically on the issues the communities want to prioritize. We will also establish the CIRRCLE Advisory Panel (CAP), which will include project staff, bilingual newcomer patients, community leaders, primary care providers, and representatives from healthcare systems and nonprofit organizations serving the constituent ethnic communities. The CAP will use input from World Café–identified issues to develop a communication plan that allows inclusion of each group’s language and culture; and a process to search for, identify, assess, and choose potential interventions that could be used in comparative effectiveness studies.