Office of Community Engagement for Health

The Office of Community Engagement for Health will help University researchers, healthcare organizations, and communities throughout Minnesota work together to identify crucial research questions, develop and carry out studies to answer them, and apply the results to enhance health and reduce health disparities. OCEH employs the principles of engaged scholarship.

1. The Community and Special Populations Collaborative will help discover improved ways to work together and expand our efforts broadly to identify health issues of concern to communities, and collaboratively design research to address these problems. The collaborative will ensure that research addresses community-identified problems of minorities and low-income populations, that this research benefits from their knowledge and wisdom, and that research results are disseminated and implemented to improve their health and reduce health disparities.
   
2. The Healthcare Collaborative will work across healthcare providers to share data, knowledge, and recruitment for research trials in new and more systematic ways between UMN and its community healthcare partners. It will employ engaged scholarship where the research questions come from the care setting, research proposals are developed and conducted by research and healthcare partners, and the results and lessons can be widely disseminated and readily implemented by these same partners.
3. The Special Rural Health Context and Needs Initiative will ensure that: 1) Rural Minnesota patients and providers participate in population-based research and clinical trials; 2) rural communities have input into population and community-based health research; and 3) relevant research results are disseminated and implemented in rural areas.

In addition, OCEH will:

1. Collaborate with the Clinical Research Implementation Services (CRIS) to provide clinical research support services, a satellite office presence, and research subject recruitment support in diverse communities when needed and requested.
2. Establish database interoperability between the community and UMN by collaborating with the Biomedical Informatics to develop the innovative MN Research Data Network (MnDataNet).
3. Provide pilot funding for community partnership research projects with healthcare organizations and rural and special population partners.
4. Codevelop tailored educational offerings accessible for distance learning.