# Community Engagement and Outreach Core

> **NIH NIH U54** · UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA HLTH SCIENCES CTR · 2024 · $808,911

## Abstract

The Community Engagement and Outreach (CEO) Core seeks to sustain and grow collaborative research 
addressing health equity in Oklahoma by directly involving communities, patients, and providers. A range of 
underlying health issues affects the tribal and rural populations in the state that contribute to Oklahoma’s 
burden of chronic illness. Nearly all communities in the state have high rates of diseases, including diabetes, 
heart disease, rheumatologic disease, and cancer, as well as poor indicators of future health, including obesity, 
substance abuse, low rates of health screening, and other unhealthy choices. As an original core in the 
Oklahoma Shared Clinical and Translational Resources (OSCTR), the CEO Core has successfully built 
relationships and collaborations, resulting in major statewide or community-oriented approaches to address 
these health issues. The core has supported two practice-based research networks and established the 
Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative (OPHIC) to provide test beds for primary care and 
pediatrics clinical and translational efforts to disseminate and implement research findings that improve 
healthcare delivery and health outcomes. The Core has supported the growth of research capacity and 
activities in tribal communities through the highly successful Tribal Engagement Unit and our unique 
partnerships. The Core will continue to work closely with its primary community partners, including the 
Southern Plains Tribal Health Board, which represents 38 federal tribes in the state and 55 tribal/IHS health 
facilities, the Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations, and OPHIC. In this renewal, the Public Health Institute of 
Oklahoma will become an additional primary partner to build on the recent successes of community-engaged 
research to address the pandemic. Together, these partnerships allow us to broaden existing activities and 
support infrastructure for community engagement efforts in rural, tribal, and other underserved populations. 
The CEO Core is establishing a new activity with this renewal that will utilize the community engagement 
studio model to help investigators improve engagement with communities and help our institutions identify 
barriers to effective engagement, as well as better align research and community priorities. The CEO Core 
activities are critical for sustained stakeholder engagement that allows our researchers to gather information 
from our communities, explore community research needs, protect communities from research risks unique to 
minority populations, resolve impediments to research efforts, and complete effective research projects. The 
CEO Core will continue to strengthen relationships between OSCTR partners that allow for durable and 
meaningful collaborations to address the primary health concerns in our communities and will develop and 
support infrastructure that increases research capacity within community partners.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10908698
- **Project number:** 5U54GM104938-12
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA HLTH SCIENCES CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** PAUL G SPICER
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $808,911
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2013-09-01 → 2025-03-12

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10908698

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10908698, Community Engagement and Outreach Core (5U54GM104938-12). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10908698. Licensed CC0.

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