Message from the Director

Jackie Shannon, PhD, RD

The Community Research Hub was established in Central Oregon in 2015 and today supports staff in Central Oregon, in Portland and a team of Community Research Liaisons and students who live and work across the state. Over the past few years, I have often been asked by colleagues at our institution to explain what we do at the Community Research Hub so I would like to take this opportunity to describe our rationale and vision for this program. 

The Community Research Hub is born of a recognized need to grow and strengthen OHSU's community-academic partnerships throughout Oregon, include a community voice in research and build capacity for community engaged research.

We work to identify and understand the gaps and barriers for communities to engage in research and use data driven decision-making and evaluation to improve health in their communities. Concurrently, we are committed to support researchers at OHSU in bringing their research to the community, through offering training, facilitating partnerships and providing local implementation support. As can be seen by perusing our website, we have a robust Community Project Assistance Program, have established trusting relationships with community partners through the state and have successfully assisted investigators in the implementation of projects in the community.  

We work closely with our colleagues Knight Cancer Institute and OCTRI as a collaborative OHSU team to support the work of community engaged investigators across the campus. My hope is that you will find benefit to our work and share your thoughts on how we may best support our colleagues and community partners and work toward an ultimate vision of supporting the entire state of Oregon as a unified, broadly recognized, respected and coordinated program of community research at OHSU.