This project is one of 36 R03 Small Research Grant awards from the National Institutes of Health under their Partners in Research Initiative. These grants are in response to the National Public Trust Initiative which seeks to build the public trust in the research supported by the NIH. One mechanism proposed is to develop models for academic/community partnership which facilitate the involvement of under-represented groups in aspects of the research process. This project is built on the current NIH-funded USC Center for Phenomic and Genomic Studies of Autism (which is a multi-site, multiple PI grant with the Autism Genetic Research Exchange at its core), the USC UCEDD, and Fiesta Educativa (a community-based education, advocacy, and support organization for Latino families with children with disabilities. The goal of this project is to better understand why Latino families of children with autism spectrum disorders are under-represented in bio-medical and genetic research on ASD and to develop and field-test community workers as Research Ambassadors in partnering with bio-medical/genetics researchers to increase the comfort level of Latino families with Bio-medical research and the scientists who do this work. The UCEDD's role was to facilitate the academic/community partnership, build the capacity of Fiesta Educativa to expand their work to include Research Ambassador function, and field-test the benefits of this community partner role for autism researchers. The ultimate goal of our partnership is to develop elements of a replicable model for increasing the number of latinos in bio-medical and autism research and identify directions for future research to validate and refine the model.
PI: Clara Lajonchere, Ph.D.
Co-PI and Contact person: Barbara Wheeler, Ph.D., Co-PI, Associate Director, USC UCEDD, 323.361.3829,
[email protected]
Co-PI: Irene Martinez, MSW, Fiesta Educativa
