Background: Despite its many potential benefits, living kidney transplant donors for ailments such as End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is an underdiscussed topic among family and friends in culturally diverse Black Communities. This is due to unique barriers such as such as complex family dynamics, cultural and religious beliefs make finding a living donor much harder for Black and other ethnic minority kidney patients. Peer volunteer educators are a new form of intervention aimed to provide a more culturally sensitive, warmer and relaxed approach to engaging and educating Black and other ethnic minority patients and their families.

Objectives:The objective of this study was to identify motivators and barriers to engaging Black and Ethnic communities in home-based living donor education through the perception of Black Peer Volunteers.

Methods: Small group interviews were conducted with six individuals of African and Caribbean heritage residing in London, United Kingdom. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, entered, and analyzed for themes using NVivo 10.0.

Results: Four themes were identified: 1) Comfort through cultural identity; 2) Education is motivation; 3) Issues with funding; and 4) Racial inequities

Conclusion: There is a need for more peer volunteer models to educate Black and ethnic families about the benefits of being a living organ donor. Access to health resources does not equate an automatic understanding on how to navigate the health system; creating awareness about living donors among patients and families remains a critical need in these underserved populations.

In August of 2015, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development embarked on a partnership with a predominant African American male organization, Kappa Alpha Psi® Fraternity Incorporated, to develop an educational outreach initiative to teach fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, and other community stakeholders about ways to reduce the risk of SIDS and other sleep-related causes of infant death. The partnership with Kappa was key because of the importance of disseminating health information through organizations and institutions most connected to local communities.

As a result of the partnership, opportunities were established to collaborate with Kappa chapters to assist with efforts to conduct education and awareness activities around SIDS and other sleep-related causes of infant death. A key emphasis was to communicate the important role men have in teaching other men, such as fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, and other community stakeholders about ways to reduce SIDS and other sleep-related causes of infant death Through a continued commitment to the partnership the Kappa Safe Infant Sleep Community Engagement Project was launched to increase the awareness of the impact sleep-related infant death and overall infant mortality has on African American communities by providing an opportunity to empower these communities through engagement and education. Building on community relationships, Kappa's engaged over 1,733 community members across the United States, informing communities of the dangers of sharing a sleep surface with an infant and the importance of following all safe infant sleep recommendations from the AAP. Data collected indicated participant's knowledge increased.

Background:

Over 42 million Americans smoke. Despite numerous smoking cessation interventions, the overall prevalence remains high for inner-city communities and Black men. To overcome institutional and socio-cultural obstacles, barbershops have been identified as culturally suitable locations for sharing health information and conducting preventive health screenings to Black men. Engaging barbers as peer educators of smoking cessation could be an effective way to improve black men’s , their partners’ and their young children’s health.

Methods:

Guided by the tenets of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Morgan State University, B’more for Healthy Babies Upton/Druid Heights, Community Engaged in Advocating for a Smoke-free Environment (CEASE) and No Boundaries Coalition developed an adaptive curriculum to train local barbers as peer educators. Ten to 12 barbers are being recruited to educate and refer interested clients to CEASE, who will conduct educational sessions and referrals to Maryland State Tobacco Initiative (MDQuit). A concurrent mixed methods approach will evaluate the effectiveness of barbers as peer educators and influencers of participation in smoking cessation programs.

Preliminary Results:

Since project initiation, five barbers have been trained on peer education, motivational interview techniques, and the process of quitting. Additional barber recruitment and training are underway. The barbers started educating their clients on the adverse effects of smoking and started referring them to CEASE and then to MD Quit. A smoking cessation guide is to be developed based on the lessons learned.

Conclusions:

A CBPR approach to training barbers implement brief smoking cessation efforts may be a valuable initiative in smoking cessation.

Issue:Hispanic women have the highest rate of cervical cancer in the U.S. and higher mortality from cervical cancer compared to Whites. Poor outcomes have been partially attributed to lower screening rates and poor follow-up for abnormal screening results in this population.

Description: Access to women’s health services for uninsured and immigrant populations in Rhode Island (RI) is limited to non-profit, volunteer-run clinics and subsidized hospital charity care. In 2015, Clinica Esperanza/Hope Clinic (CEHC) partnered with medical trainees to meet the needs of uninsured Hispanic women and continues to operate as one of a few free women’s clinic in RI.

Lessons Learned: A random review of 75 charts of 21-to 65-year-old women presenting to CEHC between 2015 and 2017 for non-gynecologic visits was performed to assess adherence to USPSTF cervical cancer screening guidelines. A secondary review of screening results from women who presented for gynecologic visits was also performed to determine disease burden. During the study period, 918 women presented for non-gynecological visits, 220 for gynecologic visits, and 196 for pap smears. For gynecologic-specific visits, 119 pap smears were performed with only 18 abnormal results, most of which were Atypical Squamous Cells of Undetermined Significance. A random review of 75 women revealed 40-62% adherence to cervical cancer screening guidelines. Challenges include limited access to gynecologic visits for pap smears, patient scheduling conflicts, and difficulty contacting patients overdue for pap smears.

Recommendations: The observed trends in cervical cancer screening suggest that barriers to accessing gynecological care in this population should be explored.

Issues. In Chicago, community violence is a public health epidemic. Communities disproportionately impacted by violence face structural inequities including economic hardship and limited public investment in health and social services, leading to disparate access to resources. Community-centered approaches to addressing violence are critically important to developing interventions that assess and respond to context-specific needs in underserved communities, yet empirical examples are limited.

Description. Saint Anthony Hospital’s Community Wellness Program (CWP) is a fully funded hospital department providing free wraparound social services to underserved communities in Chicago’s west and southwest sides. The CWP has nearly two decades of experience providing services in the areas of healthcare access, health education, parenting, and mental health counseling. In the last year, programming has expanded to integrate outreach and case management supports to provide wraparound services for survivors of violence. This presentation will describe the CWP’s model and use mixed methods data to highlight outcomes.

Lessons Learned. The CWP’s community-centered model allows for the organic development of programming aligned with the service needs of individuals and families impacted by violence. The program facilitates service access through context-specific outreach and engagement strategies. Through its emphasis on accompaniment, advocacy, and trauma-focused service delivery, the program promotes positive outcomes including reductions in trauma-related symptoms and an enhanced sense of social support and empowerment.

Recommendations. The CWP is a model for hospitals seeking to address violence in underserved communities. Understanding the context-specific needs of community residents is critical to implementing programming that promotes healing and addresses structural inequities.

Launched in South Carolina in 2017, Choose Well is a four-year statewide initiative that seeks to reduce unintended pregnancy. Choose Well works with a diverse range of partners to increase access to contraceptive counseling, clinical services, and remove cost-barriers to highly effective contraceptive methods. The Choose Well partner base includes over 50 partners representing 152 clinical sites and 9 community partners, also known as community-reaching organizations (CROs). During Year 1 of the initiative, CRO partners identified the need to have a clear, streamlined process for referring clients counseled by certified Family Planning Health Worker staff to clinical partners for contraception. It was also necessary to establish a feedback loop from the clinical partners to the CROs on contraceptive client referrals for continuity of care and to minimize barriers clients have experienced in the appointment process. In Year 2, a workgroup was formed to assess current contraceptive referral trends, facilitators and barriers across the Choose Well partner base. Over the course of 6 months, the workgroup identified best practices for initiating and completing contraceptive referrals to develop the first Statewide Contraceptive Referral Directory. This presentation will provide an overview of the process involved with developing, implementing and maintaining the Statewide Contraceptive Referral Directory to include preliminary data on the effectiveness of the referral system.

Background. Transportation accessibility in communities across the U.S. presents major obstacles to opportunities and resources, particularly among lower-income, socially-isolated populations. Engaging diverse community stakeholders can be promising to synthesize approaches to solving these complex social challenges. Earlier work has identified that community advisory boards (CABs) are an effective approach to engage key stakeholders in research, although scant research has examined the use of CABs to inform community-engagement methods within the context of transportation planning.

Purpose. We present a case study of a CAB intended to discuss and generate ideas on best practices, methods for strengthening community-engaged data collection, and feedback on summaries of academic literature.

Methods. Four CAB meetings, lasting 45-60 minutes each, took place over seven months and occurred online. Researchers recruited members that were purposively sampled across disciplines including social workers, transportation engineers, and planners.

Results. General themes from meetings identified areas for outreach and consideration. First, transportation services for veterans emerged as a critical gap. Secondly, regional mass transit, in addition to intra-city transportation, is needed. Also, social workers identified door-to-door service as important while engineers and planners viewed fixed routes as preferable in terms of best practices. Proximity to healthcare rose as a key issue, and as did perceptions of stigma and safety as barriers to mass transit ridership.

Conclusion. These findings highlight how CABs can be instrumental in facilitating community engaged participatory research, informing the needs of marginalized communities, and improve mobility while increasing equity, health, and access to opportunity.

Issue: Public health practitioners and policy makers are increasingly interested in means of increasing access to healthy food options in restaurants and corner stores, particularly in areas with high rates of obesity.

Description: In September 2015 Bronx Health REACH launched the Healthy Restaurants initiative among a group of 20 family and immigrant owned restaurants in the South Bronx, where over 40% of adult residents are obese. The initiative represented a partnership between Bronx Health REACH, the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation (SoBRO) and the United Business Cooperative (UBC), established for the purpose of working with restaurant owners to add at least one new healthy menu item to their menus and to make one of their existing menu items healthier.

Lessons Learned: There were several challenges to program implementation across sites:

• Many restaurant owners needed help up front with basic operations, such as securing food handling licenses for staff, and/or financial assistance for improvements, such as repairing major equipment
• Establishing a reliable and affordable source for new and altered menu items
• The restaurant landscape changes often, with frequent closures and turnover in ownership
• Tracking the program’s effect(s) on customer orders is difficult, particularly in cash-only environments, without staff assistance with data collection

Recommendations: Programs such as this require a substantial planning phase and their success is dependent on having the right partners in place to address restaurant owners’ needs. Sustainability requires long-term initiatives given the dynamic nature of the restaurant business.

Background/Significance: The NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) convenes a National Advisory Committee (NAC) on Research comprised of community organization leaders serving Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities across the country to foster research partnerships with organizations embedded in communities and to inform CSAAH’s community dissemination, community engagement, and research training and research initiatives to AA and NHPI audiences. The NAC is a formal advisory body of NYU CSAAH, a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities-funded National Research Center of Excellence.

Objectives: To summarize a process plan for implementing a multi-year partnership evaluation with a nationally-dispersed advisory committee of leaders serving AANHPI communities (n=12). To present key community perspectives regarding community-academic partnership benefits and expectations for group functioning for enhanced community-based participatory research (CBPR).

Methods: We adapted the Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory, a validated 40-item scale, to assess partnership via online anonymous survey facilitated by an external evaluator. Domains examined factors related to effectiveness of group functioning and information sharing.

Results: NAC perspectives focused on open communication, mutual trust, collaboration as in their self-interest, and sufficient representation of community perspectives. Subsequent group discussions clarified actionable solutions to improve partnership functioning, communication, and evaluation process for Year 2.

Discussion/Conclusions: An iterative partnership evaluation to examine group functioning is an important component for reassessing, aligning, and enhancing community-academic collaboration.

background: Many Indigenous communities have unique cultural and social contexts that may impact participation in many community health studies. In order effectively recruit study participants, it is essential to understand the community from which potential participants come from.

methods: Messengers for Health, a non-profit Apsáalooke (Crow) organization partnered with Montana State University researchers, in order to implement a study of a culturally-appropriate chronic illness self-management program, called Baá nnilah. After recruitment of participants was completed, each participant completed a brief closed-ended survey asking about how they heard about the program and who or what prompted them to join the program.

results: Survey results indicated that most participants heard about the program and were prompted to join the program because their family members were participating or they wanted to learn more about their chronic illness. The best method of recruitment was word-of-mouth. Many participants who were initially recruited did not end up participating for various unknown reasons and others were recruited on site during a data gathering session.

conclusion: Our findings suggest that culturally-appropriate ways to recruit program participants in the Crow community is by word-of-mouth, particularly because relationships are an important cultural asset. Our findings demonstrate the importance of understanding community context for study participant recruitment.