# Community Engagement Core

> **NIH NIH P20** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY D/B/A HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH · 2024 · $347,819

## Abstract

Climate change-driven heat stress is an issue of health equity, driven by lack of resources and lack of access
to cooling. Community-driven cooling solutions must be at the forefront of a sustainable, just path forward. It is
critical that researchers, community leaders, and policy decision-makers integrate their perspectives and
expertise to collaborate in bringing forth the urgent cooling solutions needed to protect communities from
morbidity and mortality due to heat stress. The Community Engagement Core (CEC) will support the Center
for Climate: Equitable and Accessible Research-based Testing for Health (C-EARTH) community-based,
interdisciplinary research initiative by engaging community and public official stakeholders to address the
impacts of climate change-driven heat stress. C-EARTH is founded on the principle that the community must
be at the center of evidence-based climate solutions. Community partnership and community-rooted processes
will enable a depth of understanding of the needs of the communities we serve in Boston, Madagascar, and in
the Africa Research, Implementation Science, and Education Network, and determine which solutions will most
effectively respond to these site-specific needs. The CEC will work hand in hand with the Implementation,
Solutions, and Evaluation Core to develop and synthesize evaluation metrics to assess our community
engagement practices, and will apply a committee structure to use that data to iterate and improve our
community engagement practices. The CEC will have three major aims: 1) provide training in community
partnership that cultivates trust, multi-directional communication, clear role definition, and shared decision-
making towards implementing community-based climate solutions that reduce health inequities; 2) support the
delivery of community-driven climate solutions that address health inequities in the community and are
responsive to the needs described by the community; and 3) synthesize evaluation data of our community
partnership work and use a committee-based model to conduct quality improvement cycles and inform policy-
makers of findings. The CEC’s approach to integrating research and community engagement will enable
effective feedback loops of inquiry, communication, collaboration, relationship building, and action. This
approach will enable a cohesive, effective team structure, and promote capacity to inform policy-makers of
outcomes of early community projects and research investigations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10982802
- **Project number:** 1P20TW013028-01
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY D/B/A HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
- **Principal Investigator:** Gaurab Basu
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $347,819
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-23 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10982802

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10982802, Community Engagement Core (1P20TW013028-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10982802. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*