• Overview
• Community Advisory Review Committee
• Urban Health Initiative
• Community Connections
• The Office of Community Affairs
• Community-Based Participatory Research
• Practice-Based Research Network
• Knowledge Transfer Unit
• Building and Sustaining Partnerships to Address Health Disparities

Overview

Our Community

The primary community of engagement is the primary service area (PSA) of the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC), the part of Chicago in which 80% of patients who visit UCMC for medical care reside. The 32 neighborhoods in the UCMC PSA are characterized by a rich cultural heritage (e.g. the Bud Billiken Parade, the largest annual parade in North America), increasing urban development and also among the highest rates of poverty, crime, infant mortality, ambulatory sensitive hospitalization rates and other measures of health and well being.

Overview

The overall aim of the Community Translational Science Cluster (Community Cluster) is to bridge the gap between the discovery of medical advances and their adoption in community practices and by our Community residents, with a special emphasis on reducing health disparities in minority populations. The Community Cluster is led by a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, basic scientists and social scientists. We are guided by a self-governing Community Advisory and Review Council (CARC) and include programs in practice based research, community based participatory research, knowledge translation and community connections. The Community Cluster is actively engaged with other programs in the Institute for Translational Medicine and with several key initiatives, centers and programs at the University of Chicago whose mission and purpose are synergistic. These include the Pilot Grants Program, the Center for Health and Social Sciences, the Program in Health Disparities Research and Training, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, the Urban Health Initiative, the Center for Interdisplinary Health Disparities Research, the Cancer Center and the Office of Community Affairs.

Leadership

The co-leaders of the Community Cluster are Bernard Ewigman, MD MSPH, Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine who leads the Practice Based Research Unit, Deborah Burnet, MD MA, Professor and Section Chief of General Medicine who leads the Community Based Participatory Research Unit and Rick Kittles, PhD, Associate Professor in the Section of Genetics who leads the Community Connections Unit.  Bernard Ewigman also leads the Knowledge Translation Unit. Additional members of the Community Cluster Leadership Team includes Dan Johnson, MD, Professor & Vice Chair, Department of Pediatrics; Dawnavan Davis, PhD, psychologist and Research Assistant Professor, Section of General Medicine; Quin Golden, Stacy Lindau.