SUMMARY - Community Engagement Core The goal of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to facilitate meaningful community involvement to ensure effective and trusted bi-directional relationships between researchers, clinicians and community. Expanded use of community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been noted as a “strategic imperative” to develop effective interventions to address health disparities; it is an essential component of the research process. A review of the history of earlier population-based studies, in both majority and minority populations, indicates that requisite to a study's success is the comprehensive involvement of the study population's Community. Community engagement strives to create action around community values, concerns and aspirations. It formulates a platform for the establishment of effective, communicative partnerships that develop and shape services and initiatives based on the community’s priorities and values. Through feedback, community engagement also enables government and public decision-making stakeholders to listen and, in turn, demonstrate the impact of community contribution. Overall, community engagement then builds deeper, stronger and more trusting relationships between academicians, healthcare professionals, public organizations and communities. The CEC will leverage the infrastructure and community networks established by Xavier and the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LACaTS) Center’s Community Engagement and Outreach Resource (CEOR) Core, which Xavier leads. The CEC will embark on successful and impactful community engagement strategies and activities by addressing three specific aims. Aim 1. Promote and sustain community- academic partnerships through bidirectional knowledge sharing and community involvement to ensure that intervention strategies and scientific discovery in health disparities are relevant to community needs and are translated into community knowledge and practice. Aim 2. Build research and learning capacity among research investigators, clinicians, community members, health systems, and potential research participants to conduct innovative and transformative research projects to address community health needs, particularly in cancer research and health disparities. Aim 3. Provide support for investigators in developing appropriate strategies to facilitate dissemination of research findings of the center to the scientific and community organizations, and lay communities. To effectively engage and communicate with the community, CEC will employ the CBPR principles and methods in ensuring the needs of the community are ascertained and addressed through research, health promotion and education. CEC will serve as a liaison between (1) investigators and community – fostering and nurturing a bi-directional relationship between academic researchers and community; and (2) internal (Xavier) and external (LACaTs) investigators – for the purpose of collaborative researc...