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About the Project
As the United States becomes more heterogeneous, better and more complete data can help us better understand the impact of diversity on health and health care, and help us devise patient-centered care strategies for diverse populations. Currently, information about many minority groups, such as Latino and American Indian subgroups, is limited, and few data sources capture this heterogeneity. This project will bring together a team of multidisciplinary senior faculty researchers for two main functions: (1) to conduct disparities research on the care provided to minority subpopulations for chronic diseases; and (2) to mentor junior faculty investigators to develop a new generation of researchers with the skills needed to reduce the disparities through improved health care.
The Network will use national and regional databases to conduct secondary analyses to identify intraethnic and interethnic determinants of healthcare quality. These findings will be widely disseminated in order to inform strategies for eliminating healthcare disparities. The Network will prioritize research on intra-group determinants (acculturation, ethnic subgroup, language preference, demographic factors, etc.) of quality of care in Latino and American Indian populations. Findings will be disseminated through conference presentations, web site, peer reviewed journals, policy papers, and fact sheets.
The Network administration is situated at UCLA in the Department of Family Medicine, and the program directors are Michael Rodriguez and William Vega. The Network is composed of distinguished expert faculty from a variety of national universities. The Network will also support five Healthcare Quality Scholars each year to address the health and quality of care issues affecting people from underserved groups with a primary focus on diabetes/obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. By providing support to Healthcare Quality Research Scholars, the Network is committed to helping develop successful independent scientists and increase the pipeline of researchers addressing quality of care issues of the underserved.
The research aims of this Network are:
(1) To provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between personal factors and healthcare providers attributable to ethnic intra-group diversity, including social, ethnic, linguistic, nativity, and economic factors.
(2) To provide a better understanding of personal and extra-personal factors promoting or impeding adequate healthcare and disease management.
(3) To examine the healthcare system barriers to quality of care for chronic conditions.
(4) To provide a better understanding of factors influencing health status including sources of health information, awareness of appropriate diet and exercise levels, self management of chronic conditions, and adequate health literacy for self and family as related to signs of major chronic disease.
- Produce peer-review papers (minimum one per year).
- Mentor, if needed, at least one funded junior faculty scholar.
- Participate in up to two monthly web supported meetings of one hour duration each. One meeting will be dedicated to interactive research presentations among the Network and the other one for discussion of mentoring progress of funded junior faculty scholars.
- Participate in annual UCLA Network meeting.
Junior Faculty Scholars Responsibilities are to:
- Meet deadlines to demonstrate work progress resulting in a minimum of one peer-review paper (conceptualization of research project including questions and hypotheses, literature review, data analysis, draft of article, internal review/ submission/revision).
- Participate in monthly web supported meetings dedicated to interactive research presentations.
- Prepare a formal presentation of funded research project to be presented at monthly meetings and/or annual UCLA Network meeting.