ABSTRACT Despite decades of concerted efforts to eliminate health disparities experienced by minority racial and ethnic groups and other underserved populations, there remains a critical need to advance heath equity in the United States. The proposed Health Equity Research Hub at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) will serve as a centralized research resource for assigned CHESIs who are conducting structural intervention research to address social determinants of health (SDOH). UMB, including our community research partners, will provide tailored scientific, technical, and collaborative support for sustainable community engagement, research capacity building, and training to assigned CHESI projects. This hub will act as a component of the Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS) Program, an innovative national effort to advance health equity. As a centralized resource, the Health Equity Research Hub at UMB will play a vital role in the implementation and dissemination phases of the awarded and assigned CHESI projects. The proposed hub will employ strategies that are responsive and adaptive to the changing needs of the CHESI projects and the various communities they serve via our four Hub Units (Administrative and Coordinating Unit, Research and Capacity Building Training Unit, Research Methods and Data Management Unit, Community Engagement and Health Equity Practice Unit) in partnership with our relevant and experienced multidisciplinary expert panel (MEP). Our proposal leverages many strengths of University of Maryland Baltimore, including UMB's Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) for which Dr. Mullins serves as Community & Collaboration Core Lead; the Institute for Health Computing, led by Dr. Maron; the PATIENTS Program and its successful PATIENTS Professors Academy, led by Hillary Edwards; and Dr. Baquet's decades of health disparities and health equity experience and research. We also leverage UMB's longstanding community-academic partnerships (CAP) in leadership and governance; specifically: Mount Lebanon Baptist Church (Lance), AFRO (Draper), BTC Partners (Pinkett) and the Institute for Public Health Innovation (Monroe). Our vision to is to serve as a catalyst for CHESIs to complete their ComPASS projects in a rigorously scientific manner and achieve their goals in a manner that demonstrates how communities of patients and researchers can collaborate to address social determinants of health (SDOH) and advance health equity in neighborhoods and society at large.

PROJECT NARRATIVE The Health Equity Research Hub at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) will provide localized technical assistance and scientific support for assigned CHESIs in addition to partnership support, research capacity-building, and training. Our vision and proposed activities align with modeling and teaching our authentic community-academic partnership (CAP) approach in addition to providing technical and scientific support. Our overarching goal is to not only serve as a catalyst for CHESIs to complete their ComPASS projects in a rigorously scientific manner but to achieve their goals in a manner that demonstrates how communities of patients and researchers can collaborate to address social determinants of health (SDOH) and advance health equity in neighborhoods and society at large.