# Expanding the CAARN to accelerate research on multiple chronic conditions with rural and African-American communities and health-care providers

> **NIH NIH R33** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2021 · $611,191

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Three out of four older adults live with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) that worsen health, shorten life
span, and increase healthcare costs; this burden disproportionally affects African Americans. Despite the
critical need for interventions to help older patients with MCCs improve self-management, existing programs
have limited reach and effectiveness in underserved communities. Our long term goal is to increase the
number and reach of self-management interventions available to improve the health of older adults with
MCCs. The objective of this proposal is to create a mature and sustainable infrastructure that facilitates the
formation and collaboration of research teams focused on the development and dissemination of effective
new self-management interventions for older adults from African American and rural communities with MCCs.
To achieve this goal, we will expand the Community-Academic Aging Research Network (CAARN), originally
created in 2010 with NIH funding to facilitate development, testing, and/or dissemination of behavioral
interventions to improve the health of older adults. To date, CAARN has facilitated community-research
partnerships between 46 investigators and social services providers in 52 counties and 1 tribe. We propose
to expand CAARN’s infrastructure from its primarily rural focus, to increase partnerships with health systems
and African American communities, by providing: 1) trained research liaisons from partnering organizations
representing health systems and African-American stakeholders; 2) training for researchers on building trust
with African- American communities; 3) multidisciplinary experts who will consult during the design phase of
interventions. These additions create a mature, sustainable CAARN infrastructure to accomplish our aims:
Aim 1: Facilitate research to develop and test the feasibility of new multi-morbidity self-management programs
for older adults that focus on activating patients towards self-management and empowering them to
continuously engage in goal-setting and shared decision-making with their provider(s) to maximize behavior
change; Aim 2: Demonstrate the effectiveness of new self-management programs for older adults with MCCs
in improving quality of life, with a concentrated focus on rural and African-American older adults; Aim 3:
Facilitate research to maximize dissemination, implementation, and reach of effective multi-morbidity self-
management programs, particularly in rural and African-American populations. Using principles of community-
based participatory research, CAARN will engage stakeholders from health systems, rural, and African-
American communities on multidisciplinary research teams to develop, test, and research how best to
disseminate interventions to reduce the substantial burden of MCCs. This should increase the availability of,
and decrease the time to dissemination of, effective, practical interventions that are tailored to these
communit...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10114182
- **Project number:** 5R33AG061699-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Dorothy Farrar Edwards
- **Activity code:** R33 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $611,191
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-15 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10114182

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10114182, Expanding the CAARN to accelerate research on multiple chronic conditions with rural and African-American communities and health-care providers (5R33AG061699-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10114182. Licensed CC0.

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