Health promotion and disease prevention are central priorities in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vision. To advance research in these areas, Congress authorized and CDC established a program of university-based Centers for Research and Demonstration of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention to explore improved ways of appraising health hazards and to serve as demonstration sites for new and innovative research in public health. Begun in 1986 with three centers, there are now fourteen. In response to a CDC request to evaluate the program, Linking Research and Public Health Practice examines the vision for the prevention research centers program, the projects conducted by the centers, and the management and oversight of the program. In conducting the evaluation, the IOM committee took a broad view of how prevention research can influence the health of communities, and considered both the proximal risk factors for disease prevention and the more distal conditions for health promotion and improved equity in the distribution of risk factors. Month?

CDC, an agency within HHS, created the SIP program in 1993 as a supplemental funding mechanism to support health promotion and disease-prevention research being done at its PRCs. Currently, there are 26 PRCs. In fiscal years 2014 through 2016, CDC awarded more than $40 million for SIPs. SIP topics vary from year to year but are to be aligned with public health priorities, such as the Healthy People 2020 Objectives--HHS's 10-year national objectives for improving Americans' health. SIPs are sponsored and primarily funded by CDC organizational units, referred to as sponsoring units. This report describes (1) what research CDC chooses to fund through the SIP mechanism, and (2) what have been identified as advantages and disadvantages of SIP eligibility being limited to PRCs.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on the future of health care states that the focus on health needs to shift to the management and prevention of chronic illnesses and that academic health centers (AHCs) should play an active role in this process through community partnerships (IOM, 2002). Grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and the creation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Prevention Research Centers (PRC) across the county represent a transition toward more proactively seeking out community partnerships to better design and disseminate health promotion programs (Green, 2001). The focus of the PRCs is to conduct rigorous, community-based, prevention research, to seek outcomes applicable to public health programs and policies. The PRCs work is to create and foster partnerships among public health and community organizations, to address health promotion and disease prevention issues (CDC, 2003). The W.K. Kellogg Foundation defines CBPR as 'a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of importance to the community with the aim of combining knowledge and action for social change to improve community health.' In 1995, CDC asked the IOM to review the PRC program to examine the extent to which the program is providing the public health community with strategies to address public health problems in disease prevention and health promotion (IOM, 1997). No comprehensive evaluation n of the individual PRCs had ever been done (IOM, 1997). The CDC was interested in understanding how it could better support the PRC program through improved management and oversight to influence the program's success. The CDC only represents one of the entities that influence the success of a PRC. Another key entity to consider is the support of and influence of the Schools of Public Health in which the PRCs reside. Using evaluation criteria similar to those that were developed by the IOM, this study examined how aspects of structural capacity of the Schools of Public Health in which the PRCs reside are perceived to influence PRC community-based research activities.

"This document summarizes the core research projects, conducted by CDC's Prevention Research Centers, active during the funding period September 30, 2004, to September 29, 2009. The CDC cooperative agreement requires that each of the 33 centers conducts at least one core project that uses community-based participatory research methods. Some centers choose to conduct more than one core project or a project having several closely allied components. As a result, 40 projects are summarized here, and they are organized as intervention research or non-intervention research." - p. 1

The Prevention Research Centers (PRC) Program, administered and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a network of academic, community, and diverse public health partners that conducts research aimed at reducing the leading causes of death and disability. The researchers are based at schools of medicine and public health across the country; in 2011, 37 academic centers were funded. Each PRC focuses on an area of expertise (e.g., controlling obesity, preventing cancer, or enabling healthy aging). The centers analyze the effectiveness of public health policies, and produce interventions, training programs, dissemination approaches, and other strategies that align with national and global initiatives to improve public health (Ammerman, Harris, Brownson, Tovar-Aguilar, & PRC Steering Committee, 2011). Each PRC's research is tailored to specific communities comprising largely underserved populations, such as Hispanics, older Americans, or rural residents, for whom the burden of chronic disease is greater than for the United States as a whole. The PRCs partner with members of the community that their research is intended to benefit; these partnerships give a voice to vulnerable populations not often heard in prevention research. Community members help choose research topics and assist in the research process, ensuring that real- world conditions are taken into consideration and thereby improving the contextual quality of the research. These collaborations increase the likelihood that successful research results will be appropriate for and used by the community. Other partners, including community-based organizations, health care systems, health advocacy groups, local and state health departments, and the business community, help in disseminating research results and effective programs by facilitating changes in policies, systems, and environments. These partnerships enable the results of the community research to spread well beyond the original study population. The PRC model is useful in targeting not only chronic disease but other public health problems as well, including immunization, infectious diseases such as HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, unintentional injury, and environmental health risks.

Demonstrating that public health and prevention program development is as much art as science, this book brings together expert program developers to offer practical guidance and principles in developing effective behavior-change curricula. Feinberg and the team of experienced contributors cover evidence-based programs addressing a range of physical, mental, and behavioral health problems, including ones targeting families, specific populations, and developmental stages. The contributors describe their own professional journeys and decisions in creating, refining, testing, and disseminating a range of programs and strategies. Readers will learn about selecting change-promoting targets based on existing research; developing and creating effective and engaging content; considering implementation and dissemination contexts in the development process; and revising, refining, expanding, abbreviating, and adapting a curriculum across multiple iterations. Designing Evidence-Based Public Health and Prevention Programs is essential reading for prevention scientists, prevention practitioners, and program developers in community agencies. It also provides a unique resource for graduate students and postgraduates in family sciences, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, social work, education, nursing, public health, and counselling.