# Igniting Hope in Buffalo New York communities: Training the Next Generation of Health Equity Researchers

> **NIH NIH P50** · STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO · 2024 · $510,252

## Abstract

The University at Buffalo (UB) NIMHD Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community
Engagement will provide well-coordinated, careful mentoring, didactic training, and professional development
individually tailored to each scholar’s needs. The education and training components of the Center of Excellence
will fill a critical gap in our minority health and health disparities research environment by bringing comprehensive
and rigorous training and mentoring in the discipline. This Center of Excellence will be the only formal training
program in minority health and health disparities research at UB, bringing an enormously important resource to
our training environment. The Center of Excellence will function as a centralized training center bringing
coordination and communication to this key element of advancing health disparities research locally and
nationally. The Investigator Development Core (IDC) will attract, mentor and train early-career investigators from
a broad range of disciplines in transdisciplinary research in minority health and health disparities, including
offering the opportunity to apply for pilot studies awards addressing health inequities and social determinants of
health in the Buffalo region (Aim 1). Two of the most important elements for early-stage investigators to
successfully establish their own independent research program are 1) training and mentoring, and 2) funding to
support the development of preliminary results to be competitive for larger extramural grants. Our IDC is
designed with these goals in mind. Because of lack of diversity in the health disparities research workforce, many
researchers lack the insight that lived experiences bring to understanding systemic racism and the effects of
discrimination and their impact on health disparities. A diverse workforce is more successful in engaging people
from underrepresented groups in research and relevant stakeholders in policy making. Research related to
racism and discrimination requires a multidisciplinary, broadly engaged, team science approach, which merges
team science and community engagement. With this in mind, we will implement a diversity, equity, inclusion, and
accessibility (DEIA) Action Plan and leverage the resources and expertise of the proposed Center of Excellence
to increase and diversify our workforce, especially in health disparities research (Aim 2). Our IDC will provide
expert training and mentoring in rigorous research design, methodology, statistical analysis, and community-
based participatory research to early-career investigators to support their research and advance their careers in
minority health and health disparities research (Aim 3). One theme of our Center of Excellence is integration of
community throughout. We will assist early-career researchers in engaging community members on their
research team and/or as a member of their mentoring team. Our vision for the next five years is that our Center
of Excellence will fac...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10899831
- **Project number:** 1P50MD019473-01
- **Recipient organization:** STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
- **Principal Investigator:** Timothy F Murphy
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $510,252
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-07-19 → 2029-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10899831

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10899831, Igniting Hope in Buffalo New York communities: Training the Next Generation of Health Equity Researchers (1P50MD019473-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10899831. Licensed CC0.

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