New $20 million initiative focuses on community-driven health research

A new $20 million research initiative will engage the people most impacted by health disparities in developing solutions that may help improve their overall health and well-being. The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service as the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a leading national philanthropy dedicated to taking bold leaps to transform health, are funding four research grants to foster collaboration between research scientists and community leaders to develop community-driven research projects aimed at improving health and saving lives.

The American Heart Association’s Health Equity Research Network (HERN) on Community-Driven Research Approaches will bring together teams of scientists from Furman University, Yale University and the University of California-San Diego to work collaboratively on research projects with community-based organizations in California, New York and South Carolina. A team from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio will serve as the community engagement resource center for the network, leveraging expertise for training across network sites and nationally, providing consultation and guidance, compiling data reports and coordinating the administration of the initiative.

“This new innovative research network aligns with the American Heart Association’s multi-pronged approach to advance cardiovascular health for all, including identifying and removing barriers to health care access and quality, increasing equity, diversity and inclusion in science and fostering more diverse research,” said Keith Churchwell, M.D., FAHA, 2024-25 volunteer president of the Association and chair of the volunteer writing committee for the organization’s 2020 seminal presidential advisory on health disparities. “These networks are designed to identify ways to aggressively address adverse social determinants of health while engaging the very people who are most impacted in improving their individual and community health.”

This initiative exemplifies our joint commitment to advancing health equity by harnessing the power of community-driven research. By working together with the communities most affected by health inequities, we are supporting innovative changes in conventional clinical research that better address health equity. We believe this collaborative effort will improve health outcomes, build a foundation of trust in the research process and contribute knowledge essential to achieving a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. “

 Alonzo L. Plough, Ph.D., M.P.H., RWJF Vice-president, Research-Evaluation-Learning and Chief Science Officer

COmmuNity eNgagEment for building Capacity, Trust, and Ownership of Research (CONNECTOR) is the name of the community engagement resource center managed by a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. This team will be led by Vasan Ramachandran, M.D., FAHA, professor and founding dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health San Antonio and the Frank Harrison, M.D., Ph.D. distinguished chair in public health. Key activities will include supporting the network teams to identify, evaluate and manage community-based solutions for fighting heart disease that match what people think they need and are willing to support to bring about local changes for better health. This will include training the next generation of students on how they can work in communities and learn from and with the people in those communities to bring about change. Additionally, the team will share key learnings of the research projects.

The three targeted research projects, which began on July 1 and run for five years, include:

• Advancing Food Justice Through Partnered Community-Driven Research – University of California San Diego and YMCA of San Diego County: This team will be led by Cheryl A.M. Anderson, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., FAHA, a professor and dean of the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego and Earl M. Felisme, Tri- Chair for the San Diego Childhood Obesity Initiative Community Council. The theme of their work is “flipping paradigms”. This team will re-imagine and re-orient the ways in which resources, information and wisdom flow between communities, academia and other institutions. They will advance food justice – the belief that everyone should have access to healthy and sustainable food – in California’s San Diego County through three core programs: a community-led granting program that funds community priorities; an academic-led scientific methods program to support community-led grants; and a postdoctoral training program. The struggle of not eating enough nutritious high-quality food, coupled with concerns related to economics, environment, housing, education, safety and discrimination can lead to poor health outcomes. The team’s vision is that everyone, everywhere will eat healthful diets and achieve cardiovascular health through research and collective action work that is community-driven, diverse and inclusive.

• JUSTResearch, FamJUSTICE and InJUSTICE – Yale University SEICHE Center for Health and Justice and JustLeadershipUSA: This team will be led by Emily Wang, M.D., M.A.S., a professor of medicine and public health at Yale University and director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice and DeAnna Hoskins, M.A., the president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA, a national organization based in New York. This team will explore why people who are incarcerated, along with their family members, are likely to have an increased risk of poor health, especially poor heart health. They will work with individuals who are formerly incarcerated to design research projects to identify health and wellness barriers. The team will collect data to determine what health risk factors may be most prevalent among people in prison and their family members and what types of interventions might be most successful in improving their health. The team plans to develop protocols and practices for a toolkit that can be used by community-academic partnerships to engage people impacted by mass incarceration in future research.

• Amplifying Community Power in the Research to Identify Systems Changes Towards Health Equity – Furman University and LiveWell Greenville: This team will be led by Melissa Fair, Ph.D., community action director of the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health at Furman University and Sally Wills, M.P.H., the executive director of LiveWell Greenville (South Carolina). The team will study perception of community power among people from underrepresented communities, as well as how local government stakeholders view community input in their work. The team will form a community advisory board to create a model for training people to become more engaged in their community. They will study the effectiveness of community-based research projects in which individuals of lived experience have a more powerful voice, and specifically how that may improve chronic disease and health inequities. Additionally, the team will conduct an analysis of research studies that have included community participation in the decision-making process. The team will also explore how local policies have impacted chronic disease across counties in South Carolina and the deep South. 

The Health Equity Research Network on Community-Driven Research Approaches is the fourth health equity research network funded by the Association. The Health Equity Research Network on Improving Access to Care and other Health Inequities in Rural America launched in July 2023 to better understand the unique health challenges related to individual risk factors, social determinants of health and lack of access to health care to people who live in rural areas of the U.S. The Health Equity Research Network on Disparities in Maternal-Infant Health Outcomes launched in July 2022 to focus on advancing the understanding of the factors underlying the disproportionate impact of pregnancy complications and deaths among women of color. The Health Equity Research Network on the Prevention of Hypertension launched in July 2021 with research projects focusing on hypertension prevention in underserved populations.