Grant Number:	5UC2CA293834-02 Interpret this number
Primary Investigator:	Jordan, Ayana
Organization:	New York University School Of Medicine
Project Title:	The Nyu Hub for Community-Led Research
Fiscal Year:	2026

Social drivers of health are societal structures that cause differential access to social and health services. While social and environmental factors undoubtedly shape health outcomes, solutions to these differences in health have primarily focused on individual and interpersonal factors, with limited effect. Effective solutions are needed to reduce and eliminate health gaps, and these must address the broader context that restrict access to resources and quality health for communities. Although community health approaches are essential to address complex social drivers of health, research that can alter the social context and trajectory of health gaps in this area is often negatively impacted by limited resources and fraught, superficial relationships with academic partners. To tackle these problems, we will establish The NYU Hub for Community-Led Research to provide support and resources to community organizations to strengthen their capacity, leadership and success in addressing factors that contribute to differences in health outcomes. The NYU Hub is strongly positioned to serve the Community-led Research Projects (CRPs) given our extensive expertise and demonstrated history of conducting research within communities to address various determinants, with specific expertise in social/environmental factors and nutrition/food environment. The NYU Hub maximizes strong and long-lasting partnerships between NYU Langone Health (NYULH) and local and national community-based organizations, partner organizations, and renowned multidisciplinary experts at NYULH and Cicatelli Associates Inc (CAI). The NYU Hub will support and ensure independence of the CRPs by: 1): Establishing a centralized, interdisciplinary administrative and coordination team to support planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and robust dissemination planning for CRPs methodology and findings to promote scalability and reproducibility of effective strategies and ensure sustainability of CRPs; 2): Provide methodological technical assistance and expertise of research methods and data management to support CRP teams to finalize interventions and research designs, improve data collection strategies, enhance data quality, and conduct rigorous and impactful interim and outcome analyses for CRPs using a community-engaged evaluation approach; 3): Strengthen CRP leadership and competencies in community-engaged research capacity by providing technical assistance strategies (e.g., workshops, seminars, and learning communities) tailored to CRPs’ capacity-building needs and is informed by evidence-based models and theory; 4): Develop long-term community engaged research activities and promote the independence of CRP interventions beyond the tenure of the grant. Our proposed hub will empower and support CRPs to successfully implement broader change that target gaps in health outcomes and cultivate communities of practice that shift paradigms about community-led solutions to ensure measurable gains in improving health access.





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