NCCIH Research Blog

We’re excited to invite you to participate in an upcoming webinar, Engaging Diverse Communities in Complementary and Integrative Health Research, on Tuesday, April 27, from noon to 2 p.m. ET. This event, which is part of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Hot Topics Webinar series, is being held in commemoration of National Minority Health Month.

Conducting research to improve minority health and eliminate health disparities is a top priority for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Learning more about how complementary and integrative health approaches might be used for improving health in diverse populations, such as racial and ethnic minorities and underserved rural populations, is a shared priority at NCCIH.  

To conduct research in diverse populations successfully, it’s important to meaningfully engage and establish partnerships with the communities. Community involvement should begin with the earliest stages of the conceptualization of a project and extend through the implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of studies that will affect the community’s health and well-being.

At the webinar, researchers who have studied complementary and integrative health approaches in diverse populations will share their insights on how to build community–academic partnerships, explain how their research has been informed by community engagement, and discuss the challenges they have faced in recruiting and retaining study participants from diverse communities. They will highlight strategies that have helped them achieve success and talk about the lessons learned along the way.

Our speakers will include:

• Daheia Barr-Anderson, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., of the University of Minnesota, who studies nutrition and physical activity interventions to achieve healthy outcomes and decrease health disparities
• Inger Burnett-Zeigler, Ph.D., of Northwestern University, who is studying the acceptability of a mindfulness-based treatment for depression in a community primary care setting
• Roni Evans, D.C., M.S., Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, who conducts community-based research on mindful movement for well-being in older adults
• Maria Pinzón, executive director of the Hispanic Services Council, who serves as a community partner on studies to reduce health disparities in underserved communities
• Robert Saper, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic, who has conducted research on yoga for low-back pain in diverse populations
• Marilyn Stern, Ph.D., of the University of South Florida, who studies interventions for obesity in rural Latino youth
• Hedy Lemar Walls, Ed.D., chief social responsibility officer of YMCA of the North, who serves as a community adviser on health promotion studies conducted in community settings

A panel of NIH staff will share perspectives from their individual institutes, centers, and offices on strategies to help bolster community-engaged health disparities research. Panelists will include:

• Patricia Jones, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., M.S., National Institute on Aging, speaking on multilevel interventions
• Jennifer Alvidrez, Ph.D., National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, discussing community partnerships
• Lanay A. Mudd, Ph.D., NCCIH, highlighting mHealth
• Cheryl A. Boyce, Ph.D., National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, discussing implementation science

Please register for this event and have your questions ready. Following presentations by our speakers and a panel discussion between the speakers and NIH staff, we will invite questions from the virtual audience.

Want to see more Hot Topics Webinars? Watch the videos of our July 2020 webinar on Probing Interoceptive Processes and our September 2020 webinar on Implementation Science and Complementary Health Interventions.

For More Information

NCCIH Hot Topics Webinar: Engaging Diverse Communities in Complementary and Integrative Health Research