CENTS: Community Engagement Network for Translational Science

Mission: We aim to promote health equity and improve health outcomes for Long Islanders, and ultimately national populations, through partnerships with Long Island communities through our Community Ambassadors and Community Advisory Board. CENTS accelerates collaborative patient-centered and community-driven research to improve health equity and community trust. Through academic-community partnerships, CENTS supports CTS focused on social and structural factors driving health disparities on Long Island.

Long Island Social Determinants of Health and Disparities

While close to New York City, the 118-mile trip from Manhattan to Montauk can take six hours. Communities are widely separated across the region, making service and healthcare access challenging. Pockets of extreme wealth and extreme poverty coexist, further widening health disparities. As an example, Long Island’s underserved Unkechaug and Shinnecock Nations are located on the southeastern shore of the island in the same region as the affluent Southampton. While seasonal work like migrant farming, landscaping and domestic housekeeping is prevalent, summer residents depart each fall, leaving behind a community with fewer employment opportunities. We organized CENTS to address these pressing health disparities with strong infrastructure for community-engaged research that integrates community members into CTS research processes and solutions.

Community Ambassadors

CENTS Ambassadors are people with lived experience from Long Island communities. Their experience is shaped by social, cultural, and historical factors, providing the voice for their specific communities. Ambassadors provide linkages to the specific communities they represent and know intimately, and are empowered as messengers of community trends, needs and concerns to LINCATS leadership and researchers. Ambassador’s responsibilities include keeping a pulse on their communities’ real-time needs and concerns using a tailored approach that recognizes the communication methodologies and social structures of the groups they represent. They promote awareness of activities related to Clinical and Translational Science with the goal of increased engagement between their communities and LINCATS.

Aiyana Smith, LICSW Aiyana Smith of the Shinnecock Nation

Veronica Treadwell of the Unkechaug Nation

Merly Fuentes of the Latino/Hispanic Community

Ruby Pritchard of the Black/African American and Faith Community

Community Advisory Board

CAB Members are both advocates and representatives that provide services to communities in Long Island and are able to influence policy, practice, and dissemination. They amplify the needs of Long Island and support our mission of “Community of Care through Communication”. View the Community Resources our CAB represents.

Christopher Brancato, MS, RN