iCubed Commonwealth Scholars Program
Culture, Race and Health Transdisciplinary Core
Description of Core
The goal of the Culture, Race, and Health iCubed Transdisciplinary Core is to improve health outcomes and to reduce health disparities among citizens in the Crater Health District. A second goal is to increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty, researchers, and students conducting community engaged and health disparities research.
Members of our core work collaboratively with the Petersburg Wellness Consortium, the Crater District Health Department, and other organizations in the Crater Health District to address health disparity needs prioritized by the community. Our 11 member team consists of two community members (Valerie Liggins from the Cameron Foundation and Tiffany Cox from the Crater District Health Department), seven faculty from Allied Health, Medicine, and Humanities and Sciences), and two-post-doctoral fellows (located in Allied Health and Medicine).
Proposed Activities of Commonwealth Scholar Students
The CSP students will be engaged in several research activities designed to support training in conducting health disparity and community-engaged research. Each CSP student will be supervised by a post-doc or faculty and engaged in several activities in the core.
CSP students will support a systematic review which will be conducted by the team in spring of 2018. The systematic review will be on health disparity and community-engagement. Work on the systematic review will involve data extraction, summarizing, and coding. Working on the systematic review will provide valuable experience to students in learning about the scientific process. Two other CSP students will attend meetings of the Petersburg Wellness Consortium, a newly developing Wellness Consortium in Hopewell, and other community events.
Students will be involved in taking notes at meetings, supporting needs assessments (e.g., assisting in focus groups or other data collection activities), and supporting community meetings in the Crater Health District related to health disparities. Each student will be expected to present their research at a professional forum such as VCU’s undergraduate research conference or Virginia State’s Conference on African American Psychology which engages students from throughout the United States.
Work Expectations for CSP Scholars
Students will work for 6-8 hours per week. Each student will be assigned a primary mentor (post-doc or faculty). Additionally, students will attend one/two meetings per semester convened with all faculty, post-docs, and graduate students.
Learn more about the Culture, Race and Health Core faculty mentors.