Administrative Core

PROJECT SUMMARY
The purpose of Northern Arizona University’s (NAU’s) Southwest Health Engagement and Research Collaborative (SHERC) Administrative (Admin) Core is to ensure that research and career enhancement in addressing health issues continue to grow at NAU. The specific goal of the Admin Core is to create a framework where the individual core components are working together efficiently and effectively. The Admin Core will achieve this goal by continually and carefully monitoring SHERC component activities. The primary functions for the Admin Core will be to: prioritize activities in all cores; set and maintain common understanding of SHERC aims and objectives; meet or exceed project milestones, and document progress against benchmarks; coordinate and keep all cross-core activities and functions “on time and on budget”; and continuously improve individual core and cross-core products and outputs through feedback and recommendations for improvement. As such, the Admin Core will continue to foster shared vision, goals, and outcomes; allocate and oversee all SHERC resources; establish and maintain community and institutional partnerships; integrate the expertise of the Advisory Committee and cores; schedule meetings and other activities essential to the success of SHERC; identify and support key personnel and the health research conducted at SHERC; evaluate SHERC’s progress in research and institutional capacity building; and oversee all other Center activities. Overall, the Admin Core’s responsibility will be to ensure that SHERC keeps its efforts focused on the goals of the program. These goals include development of an impactful research center and development of research programs that will partner with communities with limited access to care, including populations in Arizona and across the southwestern United States (US). To accomplish these goals, we will: establish regionally informed priorities and strategic plans for addressing a wide range of health issues; provide the institutional infrastructure for SHERC targeted research projects; and find creative ways to disseminate information and best practices at the individual, community, institutional, and national levels. These strategies present opportunities for effective collaboration with a wide range of community partners, and across a wide spectrum of individual, community, and institutional needs for focused health research efforts. The Admin Core’s Specific Aims are to: (1) Continue to build and sustain the leadership infrastructure of SHERC at NAU; (2) Strengthen and maintain an effective collaborative of community, institutional, organizational, and government partners; (3) Develop and expand the ability of SHERC investigators to participate in team science and translational approaches in health research in Arizona and the southwestern US; and (4) Build and maintain an interactive, comprehensive evaluation feedback system to support data-driven decision making for program improvement and innovation.

Grant Number: 5U54MD012388-09
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Julie Baldwin