COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND TRAINING CORE Project Summary/Abstract Mississippi is among the most medically underserved states in the nation and infamous for the poorest health outcomes. In states like Mississippi, the research workforce is limited by a lack of mentorship and training opportunities to conduct health research among underserved communities. The Community Engagement and Training Core (CETC) will leverage previously built community infrastructure to engage faculty, students, and the public in community-based participatory research (CBPR). It will enable collection of complex community data to answer critical biomedical and behavioral questions that will lead to actionable information that will translate discovery to practice through intervention research, clinical trials, and health innovations. The long-term goal is to improve the health of Mississippians by increasing representation of Mississippi communities in research through workforce development of scientists and health professionals. The CETC will foster opportunities for transparent and positive research interactions between academics and lay communities, increase the representation of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and city and state entities in research. The CETC will achieve this long term goals through the following specific aims: 1) Support pilot projects in CBPR through engaging CBOs with an emphasis on preventable conditions that influence chronic and infectious disease prevalence that disproportionately affect minorities, rural populations, and other medically underserved groups in Mississippi; 2) Augment biomedical and behavioral research projects at Primarily Undergraduate Institutes (PUIs) as well as other academic researchers with CETC infrastructure and community engagement initiatives to enhance communication between scientists and medically underserved groups; 3) Develop the next generation of scientists and practitioners through an intensive summer research program that emphasizes integrated, community participatory approaches to implement science in service of addressing health disparities in Mississippi. At the completion of the next award period, the CETC will have greatly increased the number of students, faculty and organizations involved in CBPR, furthering Mississippi's biomedical and behavioral research infrastructure to improve the health of underserved Mississippi communities.