 | The Worcester County Prevention Research Center (WC-PRC) is a member of the Prevention Research Centers (PRC) Program, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The PRC Program supports a network of over 35 centers to bring together academic researchers, public health agencies, and community members to conduct applied research in disease prevention and control. Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, our goal is to establish community and academic capacity to engage in equitable research partnerships for conducting behavioral intervention and policy research addressing overweight, obesity and associated chronic conditions among residents of central Massachusetts. |
Primary activities supported by the WC-PRC include:
- Building community capacity to engage in scientific research addressing obesity and overweight
- Training to improve the capabilities of academic researchers, community clinicians and public health professionals to conduct community-based participatory research on obesity, overweight and related conditions
- Training to ensure that public health, clinical and academic research workforces are effective in implementing evidence-based health promotion programs to reduce obesity and overweight
- Research to develop, implement and test interventions that utilize principles of CBPR to address obesity and overweight
- Dissemination efforts that effectively communicate research findings and make available evidence-based obesity and overweight reduction/prevention programs to participating organizations, the Worcester community, the scientific community and other identified stakeholders through numerous channels
- Ensuring that presentations, reports and other materials are tailored to the interests and literacy level of the target audience
- Systematic evaluation of the PRC infrastructure, training programs, dissemination activities and research study results