A community-engaged cardiovascular health disparities research training curriculum: Implementation and preliminary outcomes

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounts for approximately one-third of the excess overall mortality in African Americans in the United States, in large part because of disparities in hypertension prevalence and control rates with care.1-6 Barriers to CVD risk factor control exist at multiple levels, including individual socio-demographic factors and risk behaviors, as well as in the social, environmental (e.g., neighborhood stability), and healthcare (e.g., access to care) contexts.7,8 There is an urgent need to comprehensively integrate the best evidence-based, sustainable, multi-level strategies to overcome CVD disparities and to translate them into clinical and public health practice using a community engaged approach. To accomplish this goal, it is critical to train the next generation of CVD health disparities researchers, equipping them with clinical research and public health expertise in the areas of social epidemiology, health services research, health policy, community-based participatory research (CBPR), and implementation science. Advanced training in these disciplines will give disparities researchers expertise in rigorous measurement and analysis of physical and social environment exposures as contributors to health disparities (social epidemiology); examination of health care and health system contributors to disparities and designing multi-level health system preventive interventions (health services research); promotion of culturally sensitive, effective, and sustainable interventions through community and academic partnership (CBPR); and integration of research findings into healthcare practice and policy (implementation science). With this in mind, we developed a CVD health disparities research training program for faculty, post-doctoral fellows, pre-doctoral students, health professions students, and undergraduate students through the Training Core of our National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-funded Johns Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Health Disparities.9