The NIH-funded Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program is currently funding 18 academic institutions to strengthen the research environment and contribution to health disparities research. The purpose of this multiphase mixed-methods study was to establish a uniform evaluation framework for demonstrating the collective success of this research consortium. Methods included discussions of aims and logic models at the RCMI Evaluators’ Workshop, a literature review to inform an evaluation conceptual framework, and a case study survey to obtain evaluation-related information and metrics. Ten RCMIs participated in the workshop and 14 submitted responses to the survey. The resultant RCMI Evaluation Conceptual Model presents a practical ongoing approach to document RCMIs’ impacts on health disparities. Survey results identified 37 common metrics under four primary categories. Evaluation challenges were issues related to limited human resources, data collection, decision-making, defining metrics, cost-sharing, and revenue-generation. There is a need for further collaborative efforts across RCMI sites to engage program leadership and community stakeholders in addressing the identified evaluation challenges and measurement. Program leadership should be engaged to apply the Evaluation Conceptual Framework and common metrics to allow for valid inter-institutional comparisons and consortium-wide evaluations. Stakeholders could ensure evaluation metrics are used to facilitate community impacts.

As one of the Research Centers for Minority Institutions (RCMI), the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) worked over the first five-year period of funding to foster the advancement of Early Stage Investigators, enhance the quality of health disparities research, and increase institution research capacity in basic Biomedical, Behavioral, and/or Clinical research; all priorities of RCMIs. In year 4, the Technical Assistance Group-Service Center (TAG-SC) was created to help achieve these goals. The TAG-SC provides one-on-one investigator project development support, including research design, data capture, and analysis. Successful implementation of the TAG-SC was tracked using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a secure, web-based software platform allowing for immediate tracking and evaluation processes. In the first two years, 86 tickets were submitted through the REDCap system for methodological support by TAG-SC experts (faculty and staff) for assistance with health-equity related research, primarily SHERC and externally funded Social/Behavioral research projects. The TAG-SC increased the research capacity for investigators, especially within the SHERC. In this manuscript, we describe the methods used to create the TAG-SC and the REDCap tracking system and lessons learned, which can help other RCMIs interested in creating a similar service center offering an innovative way to build methodological infrastructure.

This study describes how an innovative form of support strengthened diversity goals in an institution of higher learning. The Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) at Northern Arizona University recently completed its first funding cycle supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. This study examines progress on two of SHERC’s principal goals: support the expansion of health equity research produced by SHERC-affiliated faculty and advance early-stage investigators (ESI) and underrepresented (UR) faculty research productivity. SHERC-affiliated faculty publications are described and the focus of a series of social network analyses (SNA). SHERC-affiliated faculty had access to an array of professional development opportunities. The number of supported faculty increased from 32 to 100 with a growing percentage of ESI and UR faculty. The number of UR and ESI faculty authors increased most rapidly over time. ESI and UR SHERC-affiliated faculty were co-authors in 72% and 45%, respectively, of the 139 total publications in the 5-year publication record. SNA centrality metrics revealed the important influence of ESI and UR faculty in the demonstrated increases in research publications over time. The increase of health-equity related research publications and concomitant expansion of ESI and UR faculty participation in these efforts can be facilitated by coordinated types of support offered by faculty development programs such as SHERC. The results from this study reinforce the importance of networks in organizational change efforts at institutions of higher learning seeking to build research capacity and increase scientific and community impact by advancing workforce diversity.

This case study examines key components of research readiness for Doctoral Universities with High Research Activity (R2) through the lens of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program. While there are long-standing systems in place for ranking research institutions based on grant expenditures, there is a need to establish methods to evaluate institutions' readiness for externally funded competitive research. Drawing on literature across multiple disciplines and framed in alignment with the RCMI program goals, the authors developed a multidimensional instrument to examine research readiness centered on two primary domains (investigator and institutional readiness). The largest barriers to proposal development and conducting research/scholarship projects were managing time for competing expectations including scholarship, teaching, mentoring students, and service and recruiting skilled students who are prepared to assist the research process (respectively). Building research capacity requires research infrastructure, equitable distribution of institutional and grant resources, protected time for research, and focused areas research. Findings inform evaluation methods to assess research readiness, identify indicators and set benchmarks to measure changes in capacity and offer strategies for universities to enhance research capacity-building efforts and optimize institutions' ability to conduct NIH mission relevant research.