Community Engagement
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Most of the EPRC’s activities are directly relevant to communities. In addition to conducting research and trainings on high priority topics like obesity and evidence-based approaches to chronic disease prevention, we offer small grants to community-based organizations. The EPRC has a broad range of community partners. We practice community-based participatory research in southwest Georgia and are guided by a Community Advisory Board comprising over 15 residents and local organizations.
Partners
Our Partners
The EPRC has a broad range of partners, from federally qualified health centers and United Way 2-1-1 Call Centers to other universities and public health agencies across the country. Almost all of our research is conducted through a participatory process with strong community engagement and we practice community-based participatory research with our partners in south Georgia. Although much of our work is focused in south Georgia, the EPRC also partners with organizations in metro Atlanta and around the state as well as across the U.S. and globally.
The EPRC works closely with the Horizons Community Solutions of Albany. Staff partners at Horizons Community Solutions are often the face of the EPRC in South Georgia. Horizon’s mission is to prevent cancer and increase survival among the people of South Georgia through community-based research, outreach, screening and education – all done with compassion and in collaboration with others who are concerned about cancer. Horizons is made up of stakeholders representing diverse constituencies across a 30+county rural region that is comparatively disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic status, and has a disproportionate burden of health risks.
Horizons (formerly Cancer Coalition of South Georgia) was formed in 2001, and soon after received a Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) planning grant. The planning grant supported an extensive planning process and led to the designation in 2003 as one of six GCC Regional Cancer Coalitions of Excellence.
2-1-1 is a nationally designated 3-digit telephone exchange, similar to 9-1-1 for emergencies or 4-1-1 for directory assistance, that links callers to community-based health and social services. 2-1-1 systems have the potential to reach millions of people nationally through active systems in every state. Callers to 2-1-1s are often poor and disproportionately. The majority of 2-1-1 callers are seeking help to meet basic needs such as assistance with rent, electricity, heat and food. Call centers are staffed by trained and nationally certified Information Specialists and operate in all major languages found locally.
United Way of Greater Atlanta 2-1-1 has been an essential partner on our signature intervention research projects, Smoke-Free Homes and Healthy Homes/Healthy Families. Key leadership and staff have participated on our Steering and Advisory Committees, being heavily engaged in all phases of our research. Newer 2-1-1 partners collaborating on our recent CDC funded core research project include United Way of Chattahoochee Valley, United Way of Central Georgia, and United Way of Southwest Georgia.
The EPRC is collaborating with Healthy Homes Ending Hunger (HHEH) on the current CDC funded core research project which focuses on identifying and implementing best practices to improve nutritional quality of the foods distributed through HHEH's network of participating schools.
Helping Hands Ending Hunger is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2016 with a powerful mission: to combat childhood food insecurity, reduce school food waste, support academic success, and promote healthier communities. At the heart of HHEH is its innovative “Kids Helping Kids” program, which empowers student leaders to rescue uneaten food from school meals and redistribute it to families facing hunger. A central message of the program is that food is medicine, not waste.
Thanks to persistent advocacy and policy change efforts, HHEH now operates the only program in Georgia that has been formally reviewed and approved by both the Department of Public Health and the Department of Education/School Nutrition. This approval allows the safe recovery of cold-stored foods (such as milk, yogurt, cheese, and fruit), as well as packaged dry goods, and their redistribution to students during weekends and school breaks—when the need is often greatest.
As a nonprofit committed to rigorous food safety standards, HHEH eliminates liability concerns for food donors under both state and federal laws. Additionally, the program’s unique student-led model ensures that, once implemented, it requires minimal involvement from school staff and fits seamlessly into existing school routines.
Advisory Boards
Advisory Boards
The Stakeholder Advisory Board for Translation (SAB) guides the EPRC in the translation of research into practice. Development of actionable products, training and technical assistance (TA), and dissemination to potential adopters help to institutionalize research translation as a fundamental building block of the EPRC. Additional goals are guiding the scalability of EPRC’s research tested interventions, generating new research ideas and fostering bi-directional communication about research needs. The Stakeholder Advisory Board helps connect Emory researchers to state and community partners, particularly in rural areas. Members include representatives from state and local public health agencies, United Way agencies, regional cancer coalitions, American Cancer Society, cooperative extension, health systems, and others.
The EPRC work in South Georgia operates through a Community Advisory Board (CAB). The CAB represents over 15 organizations and individuals in South Georgia who are committed to prevention research as a strategy for addressing the disproportionate impact of cancer and other chronic diseases in this region of the state. The CAB meets regularly to guide EPRC activities and establishes work groups to collaborate more intensively on specific initiatives or projects, such as identifying training priorities, selecting mini-grantees, or designing and pilot testing a survey.
Student Mini-Grants
MPH Candidate - Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
Isabella's research project explores the extent to which patients find Family Cancer History (FCH) screenings acceptable and appropriate within the context of rural Georgia public health clinics. She will sample ~20 patients who have completed FCH screenings through the adapted program in the Southwest Georgia Public Health District and conduct semi-structured interviews over Zoom. Once she analyzes the interviews, the results will allow her to examine if factors such as digital literacy or trust in public health clinics appear prominently in the quotes. This will allow her to provide an implementation process evaluation lens, moving beyond “did the intervention work” and “why did the intervention work (or not) for this population?"
PhD Candidate - Epidemiology
Noah's PhD dissertation project examines how public transportation shapes access to preventive healthcare services, like PrEP for HIV prevention, in metropolitan Atlanta with a focus on transportation as a critical social determinant of health. Using advanced geospatial methods, transit routing models, and survey data, his dissertation will develop novel measures of healthcare accessibility that better capture the real-world challenges of navigating public transit systems. This work will also identify communities facing the greatest transportation-related barriers to preventive care and evaluate spatial strategies, such as optimized clinic placement and transit-informed resource allocation, to improve health equity and access for underserved populations.
PhD Candidate - Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
This project proposes to provide a clearer understanding of both the mechanisms that disrupt cancer care for Black women as well as to identify specific points along the continuum at which interventions can be leveraged. The overall objective of this study is to build upon formative work conducted by the BRIDGE Research and Community Teams, leverage participatory research methods and a novel measure of structural racism to understand the mechanisms through which structural racism negatively impacts breast cancer care outcomes for Black women and explore how communities respond to structural racism and poor breast cancer outcomes through care and collective action.
MPH Candidate - Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
Racial disparities in behavioral health treatment and outcomes are well documented. One mechanism for these disparities is a lack of diversity and representation in the behavioral health workforce. Certified Peer Support Specialists (CPSS) are a vital part of the behavioral health workforce because their lived experience of psychiatric and/or substance use disorders makes them uniquely positioned to understand their clients and advocate for their needs. However, the majority of CPSS identify as white. A better understanding of the experiences of Black CPSS is needed to support their representation in the field and improve individuals and systems capacity for reducing racial disparities in behavioral health. For this project, interviews were conducted with 18 Black CPSS about their stories and experiences in the behavioral health system. Interviews were also conducted with 5 key informants, who are leaders in the behavioral health system and supervise or work with CPSS, to gain their perspectives on ways to support Black CPSS. These interviews will be analyzed using a Critical Race Public Health Praxis framework to guide thematic analysis. The research questions for this project are: What path do Black CPSS take to becoming a CPSS? and What are Black CPSS's stories and experiences of telling their stories to others?
PhD Candidate - Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
Although family cancer history screening enables early detection and prevention of hereditary cancers, uptake remains low among Latino communities due to multilevel barriers to care. Existing interventions have largely focused on individual-level determinants (i.e., knowledge and awareness) while overlooking broader cultural and contextual influences that shape cancer screening behaviors. To address this disparity in hereditary cancer screening among Latino, this study will examine how multilevel factors, particularly acculturation, influence engagement with Georgia's family cancer history screening program.
We will develop and validate a novel, bilingual, multidimensional acculturation scale grounded in theory and informed by community input. Using a rigorous mixed-methods approach, the project will engage Latino adults in Georgia through cognitive interviews and large-scale survey data collection to ensure the measure is culturally relevant, reliable, and valid. In partnership with the Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, this work is embedded in a trusted community setting. Findings will provide a critical tool for advancing culturally responsive interventions and improving equitable access to cancer prevention and early detection services.
PhD Candidate - Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
In partnership with The Elizabeth Foundation, the goal of this project is to co-create storytelling vignettes with people experiencing homelessness through collaborative narrative inquiry, a method that prioritizes reflection, agency , and empowerment. The vignettes will convey participants' life stories, including early life experiences, pathways to homelessness, conditions of homelessness, mental health, and experiences of stigma and discrimination. The vignettes will be widely distributed in print and digital format to reach the general public as well as key changemakers in Atlanta with the intention to destigmatize and decriminalize mental health and homelessness and garner support for policy initiatives.