Health Inequities and Global Health Branch

This program supports research to reduce and eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and improve population health for all. It focuses on research that identifies effective ways to optimize the development, implementation, contextual adaptation, adoption, scale-up, and dissemination of evidence-based community-based interventions, treatments, and services to reduce heart, lung, blood, and sleep health disparities. One example of these activities is the Disparities Elimination through Coordinated Interventions to Prevent and Control Heart and Lung Disease Risk (DECIPHeR) Alliance, which tests late-stage implementation research strategies for optimally and sustainably delivering evidence-based interventions to address cardiovascular and pulmonary health disparities and improve population health in high-burden communities. Another example is the program’s involvement in the NIH Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL), an NIH-wide research network of academic and community partners to conduct community-engaged research that could eradicate disparities.

This program supports research to generate new, generalizable knowledge regarding the optimal implementation (adoption, adaptation, and scaling) and sustainability of proven, evidence-based interventions, strategies, and guidelines that reduce the domestic and global burden of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders. It focuses on research to improve the health of people in complex settings across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and small-island developing states with limited research capacity. Research supported by this program ranges from implementing and scaling up team-based care strategies to address the burden of non-communicable diseases in LMICs and vulnerable populations in high-income countries through the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) to studies that leverage the global infrastructure for HIV and other communicable disease care to build on and advance the prevention, treatment, and control of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders in people living with HIV. In addition, this program supports research training and career development, research mentoring, and research capacity-building and infrastructure development to develop a multidisciplinary heart, lung, blood, and sleep research workforce in LMICs and small-island developing states capable of conducting effective global heart, lung, blood, and sleep implementation research.

CTRIS leads the development and implementation of NHLBI’s community-engaged research (CEnR) methodologies and tools, which are based on the premise that effective and sustainable inclusive participation in biomedical research results from building trust and meaningfully engaging communities early and throughout the research process. In addition, CTRIS emphasizes building capacity to conduct CEnR, which entails strengthening the research literacy and capacity of community partners and identifying and addressing the barriers and facilitators of CEnR from the perspective of both academic and community partners. CEAL, mentioned above as it relates to the Health Inequities Research Program, is also an example of this work.

• The 2nd Annual Saunders-Watkins Memorial Lecture – Uniting the Vision for Health Equity through Partnerships
• Elijah Saunders & Levi Watkins Memorial Lecture: Training and Mentoring the Next Generation of Health Equity Reporters: Insights from the Field
• HIV/AIDS Funding Opportunities