NIH https://www.nih.gov awarded $12 million to RTI International https://rti.org, a non-profit research institution, to support outreach and engagement efforts in ethnic and racial minority communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
The RTI award will support teams in eleven states established as part of the NIH Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL). The CEAL research teams will focus on COVID-19 awareness and education research, especially among African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and American Indian populations that account for over half of all reported cases in the U.S. The research will also promote and include these groups in vaccine and therapeutic clinical trials to prevent and treat the disease.
CEAL a NIH-wide effort led by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), will expand existing community outreach effort already underway by NIH COVID-19 trial networks.
The eleven states taking part in the awareness and education research are Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
The CEAL research teams will leverage established relationships between NIH-funded researchers and local community leaders to help reach underserved communities that might not be located near COVID-19 clinical research recruitment sites.
Go to https://covid19community.nih.gov/about for more information on CEAL.