Fresh $20 million initiative focuses on community-led health research

A recent $20 million research initiative will engage people most impacted by health inequities in developing solutions that can lend a hand improve their overall health and well-being. The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of life-saving service as the world’s leading nonprofit focused on heart and brain health for all, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a leading national philanthropy dedicated to taking bold steps to transform health, are funding four research grants to support collaborations between research scientists and community leaders to develop community-driven research projects that improve health and save lives.

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

“This pioneering recent research network aligns with the American Heart Association’s multi-pronged approach to promoting cardiovascular health for all, including identifying and addressing barriers to access and quality of care, increasing equity, diversity and inclusion in science, and supporting more diverse research,” said Keith Churchwell, MD, PhD, FAHA, Volunteer President of the Association for 2024-25 and Volunteer Writing Committee Chair for the organization’s landmark 2020 Presidential Advisory on Health Inequities. “These networks aim to identify ways to aggressively address adverse social determinants of health while engaging those they most impact to improve their individual and community health.”

This initiative exemplifies our shared commitment to promoting health equity by harnessing the power of community-led research. By working with communities most impacted by health inequities, we are supporting pioneering changes to 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 the knowledge necessary to achieve a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.

Alonzo L. Plough, Ph.D., MPH, RWJF Vice President for Research, Evaluation, and Science and Chief Science Officer

Engaging the Community to Build Capacity, Trust and Ownership of Research (CONNECTOR) is the name of a community engagement resource center managed by a team from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The team will be led by Vasan Ramachandran, MD, FAHA, professor and founding dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health San Antonio, and Frank Harrison, MD, Ph.D., distinguished chair in public health. Key activities will include supporting network teams to identify, evaluate, and manage community-based solutions to heart disease that meet what people believe they need and are willing to support to make 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 people in those communities to make change happen. In addition, the team will share key learnings from research projects.

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

• Supporting food justice through community-led research – University of California, San Diego and the YMCA of San Diego County: The team will be led by Cheryl A. M. Anderson, Ph.D., MPH, MS, FAHA, 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. Their theme is “inverting paradigms.” The team will reimagine and transform the flow of resources, information, and wisdom between communities, academia, and other institutions. They will advance food justice—the belief that everyone should have access to fit, sustainable food—in San Diego County, California, through three major programs: a community-driven grantmaking program that funds community priorities; a science methods program that supports community-driven grantmaking; and a postdoctoral training program. Combating the shortage of nutritious, high-quality food, coupled with concerns about economics, the environment, housing, education, safety, and discrimination, can lead to impoverished health outcomes. The team’s vision is for everyone, everywhere to eat healthily and take care of their cardiovascular health through research and collaborative action that is community-driven, diverse and inclusive.

• JUSTResearch, FamJUSTICE and InJUSTICE – Yale University SEICHE Health and Justice Center and JustLeadershipUSA: The team will be led by Emily Wang, MD, MAS, professor of medicine and public health at Yale University and director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, and DeAnna Hoskins, MA, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA, a national organization based in Fresh York City. The team will examine why incarcerated individuals and their family members are at greater risk for impoverished health, especially impoverished heart health. They will work with formerly incarcerated individuals to design research projects to identify barriers to health and well-being. The team will collect data to determine what health risk factors may be most prevalent among incarcerated individuals and their family members and what types of interventions may be most effective in improving their health. The team plans to develop protocols and practices for a toolkit that can be used by community-scientific partnerships to engage people affected by mass incarceration in future research.

• Empowering communities in research to identify systemic change toward health equity – Furman University and LiveWell Greenville: The team will be led by Melissa Fair, Ph.D., director of community engagement at the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health at Furman University, and Sally Wills, MPH, executive director of LiveWell Greenville (SC). The team will examine perceptions of community power among people from underrepresented communities, as well as how local government stakeholders perceive the community’s contribution to their work. The team will create a community advisory board to create a model for training people to be more engaged in their community. They will study the effectiveness of community-based research projects in which people with lived experience have a stronger voice, and in particular, how this can improve chronic disease and health disparities. In addition, the team will analyze studies that have included community participation in decision-making. The team will also examine how local policies have affected chronic disease in 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 for people living 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 knowledge about the factors that underlie 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 focused on preventing hypertension in underserved populations.