# Community Engagement and Outreach Core

> **NIH NIH P20** · UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA · 2024 · $330,144

## Abstract

SUMMARY/ABSTRACT – COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE
Nutrition involves specific nutrients and foods but also complex systems within a community and
society that define what, why, how, and when a person eats. People living in poverty, and with
the many challenges linked to poverty, are more likely to experience nutritional health disparities,
such as obesity. As such, meaningful, bidirectional community engagement is critical to impactful
research that addresses persistent, complex health conditions, including those associated with
poor nutrition. However, despite its value, community engagement for many researchers is not
easy, can be uncomfortable, is often not prioritized and thus not often done. The proposed
Precision Nutrition COBRE prioritizes community engagement for all COBRE researchers, to
enable a unique community-informed approach to nutrition research. The Community
Engagement and Outreach (CEO) Core will serve as the bridge for Precision Nutrition COBRE
researchers and the communities most effected by nutrition-related health conditions, in
order to foster impactful research that is feasible and relevant to local communities. The CEO
Core will be based at Hawaii’s largest federally qualified health center, with a long history of
community-based research. Led by a unique team of community-based clinical and basic
science researchers with extensive experience in participatory research, and a commitment
to working with Hawaii’s community organizations and leaders, the CEO Core will be
essential to the success of the Precision Nutrition COBRE. The Specific Aims of the CEO
Core are to 1) Facilitate researchers’ understanding of the nutrition-related priority issues and
concerns of the community, and the context in which nutrition-related health disparities
develop and persist; 2) Promote the development of meaningful, sustainable, collaborative
alliances between community stakeholders, community providers, academic researchers,
and others in an all-inclusive nurturing professional development environment; and 3)
Promote high-quality nutrition research that builds on and augments the knowledge/expertise
of communities by helping researchers to appropriately incorporate a community context into
their studies. This innovative CEO Core will provide researchers an experiential, first-hand
framework regarding Hawaii’s communities that will, in turn, support meaningful
interdisciplinary, sustainable partnerships and impactful Precision Nutrition research.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10782533
- **Project number:** 5P20GM139753-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
- **Principal Investigator:** May Michiko Okihiro
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $330,144
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-03-20 → 2027-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10782533

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10782533, Community Engagement and Outreach Core (5P20GM139753-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10782533. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*