Community Engagement
Giselle Corbie-Smith, MD, MSc
Betsy Sleath, PhD
Alice Ammerman, DrPH
Sam Cykert, MD
Paul Godley, MD, PhD, MPP
Philip Sloane, MD, MPH
Malika Roman Isler, PhD, MPH
The Community Engagement Core engages communities, faculty, and health care providers as partners in clinical and translational research and ultimately transforms the way that academic investigators and community members work together while boosting public trust in research. This core, led by Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith, will leverage UNC-CH's extensive experience serving North Carolina communities and multiple existing community-based research efforts to create a unique program with interdisciplinary leadership and a focus on the priorities below. NC TraCS offers a variety of online learning opportunities; click here to learn all about our online training modules. To learn more about Community Engagement, click here.
Current Core Activities:
Connection Initiative
Dr. Alice Ammerman will lead the connection initiative by providing a single, easy to access connection portal and interactive web map to support a 2-way flow of communication between NC TraCS researchers and North Carolina communities. This connection portal creates a coordinated venue for information sharing related to geographic and topic-specific service areas, as well as dissemination of evidence-based interventions. These resources allow our partners to coordinate and leverage existing strengths, while developing new initiatives.
Tailored Educational Offerings
The CEC supports the training mission of the NC TraCS Institute by providing tailored educational offerings to increase the capacity of investigators, community members, and community providers to understand the substantive, methodological, and pragmatic considerations of community-based research and provides technical assistance to investigative teams conducting clinical and translational research in diverse communities. Morris Weinberger, PhD, from the Education, Training and Career Development (ETCD) Core supports this CEC effort.
Research Infrastructure in Community-Based Research
Drs. Sam Cykert, Paul Godley and Phil Sloane, created and sustain a research infrastructure in community-based research units, the Regional NC TraCS Campuses, and existing practice-based research networks to facilitate and disseminate clinical and translational research as well as support ongoing collaboration. The Greensboro and Wake Regional NC TraCS Campuses are situated within the local community and among other tasks, provides consultation with study implementation, data collection, data entry, report summaries, and the dissemination of study results to various segments of the community.
Operations
Dr. Malika Roman Isler, Assistant Director, manages the university and community-based administrative operations. Looking for funding, researchers, clinical trials, or a calendar of community learning opportunities? Click here to go to Community Toolkit section of the TraCS website.
