The Boston Children’s Hospital Center for Collaborative Community Research (C-CORE) was created in 2010 with grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and internal funding from Boston Children’s Hospital’s Translational Research Program. C-CORE aims to reduce child health disparities in Boston through an innovative partnership among four cornerstones of children’s health and education in the city – Boston Children’s Hospital, the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), Boston Public Schools (BPS), and the Boston Conference of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.
C-CORE activities are guided by the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach that engages community members and researchers in an equitable partnership throughout the research process. CBPR unites researchers’ technical knowledge with community partners’ understanding of issues of concern, potentially leading to innovative, effective, and sustainable programs that have relevance for communities. C-CORE activities are oriented around three major aims:
(1) building infrastructure to conduct community-partnered research
(2) designing education strategies to train a new generation of academic and community members in the principles of and skills for CBPR
(3) promoting the dissemination of research findings to stakeholders.
