USM Hosts Community-Engaged Research Summer Institute

The University of Southern Mississippi hosted the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research's Community-Engaged Research Summer Institute July 9-14 2017 at the Trent Lott Center on the Hattiesburg campus.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medicine Sciences, the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research (MCCTR) is a collaboration between The University of Mississippi Medical Center, Tougaloo College and The University of Southern Mississippi that seeks to provide the infrastructure needed to support obesity-related research across the three institutions.

The MCCTR's Community-Engaged Research Summer Institute is one of the professional opportunities extended to faculty interested or already engaged in developing obesity research. The Institute included eleven participants from four institutions of higher education from across the state, and the week included presentations on various aspects of planning and conducting community-engaged research related to obesity, along with individual and group activities focused on developing a proposal for a community-engaged, obesity-focused research project.

 Disciplines represented by the participants included anthropology, education (instructional leadership and curriculum development, human performance/exercise science, experimental medicine, human development, nursing, public health/epidemiology, pediatric medicine, pharmacy and sociology.

Dr. Caroline Compretta, assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at The University of Mississippi Medical Center who attended the Institute said, “The Institute was a wonderful learning experience, and I look forward to working with several other participants on future projects.”

The Southern Miss portion of the MCCTR is house within the College of Health.

For more information on the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research, visit www.usm.edu/health.