The Community Engagement and Dissemination Core (CEDC) will facilitate equitable collaborative and sustainable relationships with community partners and other stakeholders. Universities have long considered community engagement as a social responsibility. A more comprehensive approach to working with communities is required to shift the narrative from viewing communities as groups of people who have needs to recognizing them as assets. Engaged communities can show institutional leaders and researchers how to better understand and address social determinants of health and increase the impact of research discoveries. This is the approach that our NIMHD Center of Excellence in Investigator Development and Community Engagement will take. Our activities will be undertaken in collaboration with our community-university-government partnership, a collaboration established in 2014 involving multiple sectors of the community. The active participation of community and elected leaders will be particularly impactful in translating the results of our research into measurable impact in health disparities in Buffalo. The CEDC will aid investigators and community co- investigators during the planning and conduct of research to build community-based participatory research capacity (Aim 1). Working with the Investigator Development Core the CEDC will work with each pilot study awardee to 1) provide training in working with the community, 2) link scholars with key community partners in the planning stages of their project, 3) develop a dissemination plan for their project to be implemented during the project and after it is completed, and 4) plan and implement an approach for their work to lead to actual benefit to the community. This often involves the planning of a larger project facilitated by the pilot study, which in many cases provides key preliminary data for the larger project. The CEDC will work with research teams in sharing results of research for diverse audiences, including non-scientific community members, policy makers and community-based stakeholders in translating research findings to promote sustainable community- and system-level change (Aim 2). We will work closely with the community-based Buffalo Center for Health Equity who have an extensive communications network with broad reach into the community. The CEDC will offer small Community Partnership Grants to African American led community-based organizations to support neighborhood projects designed to mitigate health inequities (Aim 3). This initiative arose from planning discussions with community members who expressed a clear interest in working with the Center of Excellence to build capacity and develop critical infrastructure in community-based organizations and bring immediate visible benefit to community members. Our five-year vision is that the Center of Excellence will catalyze a transformation of community-based research by expanding our research workforce, training future leaders in t...