The Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) and the Puerto Rican Agenda (PRA) has established meaningful partnerships with the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) as a result of a federal grant through the NNLM, University of Iowa Campus. The Partnerships call for development, implementation, and evaluation of a series of outreach and educational events, including development of bilingual educational materials, and, for updating the PRCC & PRA websites with linkages to NNLM resources, information, videos, and a wealth of other NNLM community information.
The mission of the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) is to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing community groups and health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and public access to information to enable the public to make informed decisions about their health. The Program is coordinated by the National Library of Medicine and carried out through a nationwide network of health science libraries and information centers.
The ultimate goal of the four-month funded project is to support the NNLM outreach and education work in creating awareness and/or facilitating recruitment and retention of one-million people to the All of Us (AoUs) Research Program —an NIH nationwide research study that is recruiting interested individuals of diverse backgrounds to be part of a database that may lead to invitations to participate in future specific studies about the prevention and treatment of acute and chronic conditions and to the advancement of personalize medical care based on individuals’ lifestyle, environment, medical history, and genetics. NNLM together with the IL Precision Medicine Consortium—a group of academic institutions and hospitals such as the University of Illinois-Chicago and Peoria, University of Chicago, Rush University and Medical Center, North Shore Hospital, Cook County Hospitals PRCC and PRA is expected to contribute to meeting the All of Us Research Program goal in collaboration with multiple regional and national organizations.
The PRCC project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Library of Medicine, under Grant Number UG4LM012346 with the University of Iowa. For more information, visit: www.nnlm.gov or contact Melissa Benajeer at melissab@prcc-chgo.org, PRCC Resource Development, Lisa Aponte-Soto, PhD, President and CEO of Tacoma Consulting, at lapontesoto@tanomaconsulting.com or Aida L Giachello, PhD. Research Professor at Northwestern University and Member of the Puerto Rican Agenda’s Health Committee at a-giachello@northwestern.edu or at aidagiachello.pragenda@gmail.com.