Our Community

We are members of the African-American, Latino and Native American Communities.  The core group consists of our steering committee and advisory committee.   We have roles such as patients, caregivers, researchers, academicians and health care providers.

We provide a forum for planning and action toward areas of health related needs that can be met utilizing technologies that are available to stakeholders where they live and work.   Our collaborative seeks to utilize these technologies to prevent, treat and manage diabetes and hypertension in minority communities.

The collaborative is funded by a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) planning grant.  This is a small pilot grant that is geared toward helping communities to form cohesive connections in order to plan for a research proposal that can be submitted in future years.

Why Diabetes and Hypertension?

Diabetes and hypertension frequently coexist with approximately 50% of individuals being diagnosed with both diabetes AND hypertension together.

When both hypertension and diabetes are present together, there is a 4 fold increased risk of stroke and myocardial infarction compared to individuals without the disease.  The prevalence of these diseases is much higher in low income and racial/ethnic minority patients.  The fact that many people own and use a smartphone, even in lower income communities, the use of a smartphone may make mobile health approaches particularly useful as a patient self-management tool. The purpose of this project is to form a community collaborative to bring together patients, community leaders and health care professionals to identify approaches and priorities for patient self-management including the usefulness of approach for leveraging mHealth technologies for self-management.

What We Do

We are creating a community network to conduct a research study to address diabetes and hypertension outcomes

This work is being conducted in 3 Tiers.

During Tier 1 we have:

• Created an advisory board to form a partnership between three community serving organizations in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, patients with the disease, community based health care providers and local research professors.
• Surveyed the broader segment of the representative community members to identify a list of PCOR research questions related to disease self-management.
• Begun to define our research questions

During Tier 2 we will:

• Work to get a broader segment of the community to provide input and join us in this important effort
• Finalize our research questions
• Draft our research proposal

During Tier 3 we will:

• Finalize and submit our research proposal for funding