Our Story
In January 2004, the Center for Health Equity Engagement Education and Research was created by Case Western Reserve University and the MetroHealth System. In 2007, the we received a P60 grant from the National Institutes of Health allowing the Center to pursue projects related to hypertension, kidney disease, and organ donation.
In 2017, we turned a new page, receiving a U54 grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research and community dissemination with several new projects. The grant, “Involving Communities in Delivering and Dissemination Health Disparity Interventions,” offers new opportunities for the Center to continue with its long-term goals of creating durable academic/community partnerships, promoting replicable interventions for measurable reductions in health disparities, and training a new generation of health activists committed to eliminating health disparities wherever they find them.
A new advisory body was created from this grant, the Community Research and Dissemination Think Tank. This group will advise the center on best practices for disseminating our research in the community, while also developing and launching their own ThinkTank project.
One of the first projects launched was the Pilot Awards for Community Engaged Approaches to Understand or Reduce Health Disparities. This project aims to develop investigators with a capacity to engage in partnerships with communities to conduct high-quality health disparities research. Our pilot award investigators meet monthly as part of our Community Based Research Network (CBRN), gaining valuable knowledge from a diverse group consisting of former CRSI Scholars, non-profit professionals and fellow academic researchers interested in community-based research.
Another project seeks to increase the input of health disparity populations into the dissemination of research findings by medical journals. The Community Journal Reviewers Project trained fifteen community members how to review manuscripts for two prominent journals, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Annals of Family Medicine. Journal editorial teams will then use these reviews in decisions to accept, revise, or reject manuscripts.
In March 2022, we kicked off our strategic plan by interviewing more than 35 internal and external stakeholders. A group comprised of members of the MetroHealth Research Institute, the Population Health and Equity Research Institute (PHERI), Center staff, and Center collaborators met to incorporate the findings from the interviews into the strategic planning process. This culminated with a virtual retreat in December that was extremely well attended. With a bit more work and discussion we are proud to present our new name, vision, mission, and logo.
Our Name is now the Center for Health Equity, Engagement, Education, and Research (CHEEER).
It reflects a more modern definition of our work while emphasizing our focus on education and research through close relationships with the communities we serve.
Our Vision & Mission
Our Vision | Be a trailblazer in achieving health communities through engaged research, education, and advocacy.
Our Mission | Partner with communities to:
- Conduct innovative health equity research,
- Develop a network of diverse health equity leaders, and
- Advocate for policies that promote well-being and health for all