ABSTRACT COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE (CEC) Research collaborations and partnerships are invaluable to CDU investigators to facilitate the exploration of scientific arenas that lie beyond their areas of expertise and expand translational research. The university holds a rich history of successful partnerships within the university, with other research institutions, and with the community. The synergy of university and community partners makes it possible for CDU to respond to a rapidly changing environment, by creating unprecedented opportunities for research linkages within and across research domains in and outside of the university and with community partners. CDU has served as the lead institution with the RCMI Translational Research Network (RTRN) consortium and the CDU- UCLA Cancer Center to Eliminate Cancer Health Disparities and is an essential partner for UCLA-CTSI. In the previous funding cycle, the CEC developed an avenue of research translation aimed at increasing health disparities research and began anchoring translation opportunities for three key focus areas: cancer, cardio- metabolic diseases, and HIV/AIDS. With the development of community collaborations, community expertise was integrated through a series of educational opportunities to provide research translation knowledge for clinical and community research addressing key focus areas of interest. Expanding knowledge with national inter- institutional collaborative research through collaborations via RTRN and UCLA-CTSI facilitated components of science translation. Building key new constructs for community translation in the focus areas of cancer, cancer, cardio-metabolic diseases, and HIV/AIDS requires adopting methods and approaches for translational science to be transformative in communities. Accordingly, the CEC has four overriding objectives for the next funding cycle. The first is to serve better Hispanic/Latino and African American populations groups affected by health disparities and diseases, particularly those communities served by CDU and community partners. Second, we will embrace new community-based participatory (CBPR) research frameworks to solidify partnerships. Third, we aim to enhance new ideas of community organization and social action models. Fourth, we will integrate various dimensions of translation with the potential for forging collaborations and partnerships that can embrace systems change for reducing and eliminating health disparities in afflicted and vulnerable communities.