PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & OUTREACH (CEO) CORE Engaging with patients, families, caregivers, neighborhoods, and communities is an essential feature of implementation research. Meaningful engagement requires trust, which comes from sustained collaboration over time. In the case of rural research, substantial distances between researchers and stakeholders create even more serious barriers to meaningful engagement. In addition, culturally competent approaches—informed through partnerships with those individuals and communities experiencing inequities—are essential for making a meaningful impact on population health. The vision for the CEO Core is to offer a comprehensive suite of educational opportunities and facilitating services that accelerate stakeholder engagement for researchers to achieve maximal engagement effectiveness. The specific aims of the CEO Core are to: Aim 1. Orient investigators to equity research and community engagement frameworks and create engagement plans to support implementation research that is focused on equity. The CEO Core team will guide Project Leads in the development of an engagement plan, adapted from the PCORI Engagement Plan Template. The CEO Core team will meet with Project Leads on a quarterly basis to review engagement plans and benchmarks, share lessons learned, and troubleshoot barriers. Aim 2. Provide comprehensive community engagement services for COBRE projects and the broader research community that successfully reaches populations experiencing health disparities. The CEO will link COBRE investigators with organizations and community-engaged professionals across Kansas that can facilitate culturally informed and competent engagement. Based on the engagement plan, the CEO will link investigators and their community partners using services and trainings to meet benchmarks for engagement. Aim 3. Support dissemination of research project findings and methods for pursuing equity through community engagement. The CEO will support on-going engagement that ultimately will lead to breadth and depth of dissemination of research findings to stakeholders, including patients, clinicians, organizations, societies, and policy makers. Aim 4. Collaborate with the Administrative Core to evaluate CEO effectiveness. The Core will collect ongoing data to evaluate and improve services. In addition, the Core will collect data from Project Leads and pilot project awardees on community engagement activities in real time via the Community Check Box Evaluation System.