Administrative Core

The primary functions for the Administrative Core are to prioritize activities in all cores, to set and maintain common understanding of SHERC aims and objectives, to coordinate all cross-core key functions and activities, to meet or exceed projected milestones and outputs, and to improve individual core and cross-core products through ongoing feedback and recommendations.

As such, the Administrative Core is responsible for creating a shared vision, goals, and outcomes, allocating and overseeing all SHERC resources, providing administrative support, establishing and maintaining partnerships among NAU and local community agencies and tribes, as well as the Advisory Committee and Cores, scheduling meetings and other activities essential to the successful functioning of SHERC, establishing a leadership team, selecting key personnel, evaluating research progress and mentoring project leaders (PLs), and overseeing all other center activities. The overall responsibility of the Administrative Core will be to ensure that SHERC keeps its efforts focused on the goals of the program. These goals include the development of a self-sustaining research center and development of research programs that will partner with local communities and tribes to address health disparities.

To accomplish these goals, we will (1) establish community-engaged priorities and strategic plans for addressing a wide range of health disparities, (2) provide the institutional infrastructure for the SHERC targeted research projects, and (3) act as the basic infrastructure for finding creative ways to disseminate information at the individual, community, and institutional levels. Anchoring SHERC with these elements presents opportunities for effective engagement with a wide range of community partners, and across a wide spectrum of individual, community, and institutional needs for focused health disparities research efforts.

The Specific Aims of the Administrative Core are to: 1) Build and sustain the infrastructure of an effective Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) at NAU, 2) Establish and maintain an effective collaborative of community, institutional, and organizational, and government partners, 3) Develop and expand the ability of SHERC investigators to participate in interdisciplinary approaches to addressing health disparities in Arizona and the Southwestern United States, 4) Develop and support a cadre of health disparities researchers at NAU, and 5) Build and maintain an interactive evaluation, assessment, and feedback system that utilizes a Logic Model Plus approach to program development, maintenance, and feedback for improvement or innovation.