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Community Health Research Liaison Center
Up one levelThe Community Health Research Liaison Center is a community resource where agencies, organizations, and residents can avail themselves of training and information to better understand research, receive research coaching, better define their concerns, and seek researchers with whom they can work.
The Center includes a virtual library available to both researchers and members of the community, helping both to better understand the nature of the populations and communities to be studied, as well as relevant community-centered research and best practices at Duke and elsewhere.
Activities
Assistance locating potential researchers with whom to discuss their interests and needs.
Seminars developed for community members describing the elements of research, its language and ethical boundaries, research funding and its priorities, the role of the researcher and issues that affect researchers’ interest in particular subjects, and critical tips for working successfully with researchers and trainees. Seminars are delivered at community sites on a regular basis, and as requested. Seminars can be delivered in English and in Spanish and include education on:
- The language of research, to enable community groups to interpret researchers’ requests and to enable them to critically examine and support the research;
- The ethics under which researchers are bound, and how that affects their capacity to structure their work;
- The rights of research subjects;
- The limitations of research, to help community members deal with difficult questions such as why research subjects from the same community may be divided into intervention and control groups, or why an intervention may not be able to continue following completion of the research;
- The IRB process and its associated accountabilities;
- Academic freedom and issues concerning publication and authoring;
A Virtual Library for Researchers and Community Members that will house:
- Best community-engaged practices and research, culled from national and state agencies and reputable awardees;
- Compendium of available national, state and local resource organizations that can offer guidance and effective practice of community-engaged research to assist community members and researchers.
- Local agency database on Durham service organizations, including their service listings and limitations, and contact information;
- Regularly updated listing of validated population research methods.
Support Faculty and Staff
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Lori-Carter Edwards, PhD Lori Carter-Edwards, PhD, is the Director of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in the Division of Community Health, Assistant Professor of Community and Family Medicine, and a faculty member of the of the Duke Center for Community Research in the DTMI. |
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Dr. Carter-Edwards received her BA in Psychology from the University of Notre Dame (1987), an MPH in Health Education from UCLA (1990) and a PhD in Epidemiology from UNC-Chapel Hill (1995). She completed her postdoctoral training in clinical epidemiology (1995-1997) at the Duke Hypertension Center sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Her research expertise is in social epidemiology, with emphasis in cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in under-represented populations. Dr. Carter-Edwards has more than 10 years of experience leading hypertension-related church-based studies in African-American populations. She is presently investigating lifestyle behaviors and access to care in adolescent, postpartum, and elderly populations at risk for cardiovascular-related disease, and leading a 9 county NC-SC community nutrition program and a statewide pediatric obesity prevention/reduction program. |
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Gwen Murphy, RD, PhD Dr. Murphy completed a MS in Nutrition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Carolina School of Education in 1993. |
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Dr. Murphy is an Assistant Consulting Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center. She worked at Duke as a Nutrition Clinician prior to getting her PhD and has worked since 1993 in the field of medical curriculum design, evaluation and research as well as faculty development. Dr. Murphy works with the Graduate Medical Education office to help graduate programs meet the competency requirements. Her current research is with Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC and the American Dietetic Association on the cost effectiveness of medical nutrition therapy for overweight adults, and other current work includes community-based nutrition network development in NC and SC. |
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Mina Silberberg, PhD Dr. Silberberg serves as the Director of Evaluation for the Division of Community Health, designing and leading the evaluation of the Division’s care management and clinical services. |
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Dr. Silberberg is an Assistant Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center. She also serves as program director of the African-American Health Improvement Partnership, an NIH-funded community-based participatory research project focused on African-American patients with diabetes in Durham. Before coming to Duke, Dr. Silberberg was a Senior Policy Analyst at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, and prior to that was a faculty member in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers-Camden. Dr. Silberberg’s research has focused on care management, long-term care and caregiver support, school-based health care, racial disparities in health, and community organizations. She has worked and conducted research in Latin America, as well as in the United States. Her research has been published in the Health Care Financing Review, The Gerontologist, Care Management Journals, Social Service Review, and Public Productivity and Management Review. |
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Tia Simmons, MPH Tia Simmons, MPH serves as Medical Instructor and Training Coordinator with the Division of Community Health. Ms. Simmons is responsible for the Division’s community-based service learning activities, through the Learning Together Program, to teach learners from multiple disciplines to effectively engage with the community. |
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Ms. Simmons is a faculty member of the Liaison Center of the Duke Center for Community Research of the DTMI and Medical Instructor, at the Duke University Medical Center. Ms. Simmons also serves as the Project Coordinator for ALMA (Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma), a Duke-UNC-CH joint peer-education research project teaching coping mechanisms related to immigration and acculturation to Latinas in Durham and Chatham Counties. Ms. Simmons provides instruction in community health rotations for Duke medical students, ABSN students, and Pediatric and Family Medicine residents. Ms. Simmons serves on the Council for Civic Engagement, a Duke University Provost appointed committee of the Campus-Culture Initiative. |
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Barbara Gregory, MPH Barbara Gregory holds an MPH from UNC-Chapel Hill and is currently completing an MA in Liberal Studies at Duke. Ms. Gregory serves as Coordinator for the DCCR Virtual Library. |
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Most recently, Ms. Gregory was the Quality Analyst for the Duke Department of Community and Family Medicine. She has 10 years of experience in quality and patient safety in the United States and the United Kingdom. She has taught quality improvement classes to residents, medical students, and other allied health students, and has co authored a web-based QI teaching module. She worked as the manager of a Community Health Center for 7 years in the UK, and, after relocating to Durham, was Director of a community-based project providing in-home chronic disease management for patients in selected low-income neighborhoods. In the DCCR, Ms. Gregory will construct a virtual library to serve community members, researchers, and trainees to develop community-engaged research projects and to interpret results. Since joining the DCCR Ms Gregory participates on several Partnership for Healthy Durham Committees including: People’s Clearinghouse on Minority Health, Mental Health, and Senior Health/Keeping in Step. |
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