Growing clinical trials — Grant aims to repair mistrust of research

Her cells — the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture — have led to major scientific breakthroughs including the polio vaccine, cancer and gene mapping.

The full series Read the previous stories from this week’s series on clinical research. National push, campus priority UNMC a prime site for leading clinical research group A patient benefits from clinical trial A researcher’s perspective The series will continue with monthly features on clinical and translational research.

But Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer, died without knowing how her cells transformed modern medicine.

Those cells, known as HeLa to scientists, were taken without her knowledge.

“Incidents like this and others in Native and Latino communities have left a legacy of mistrust of scientific researchers,” said Alberto Cervantes, board president of the South Omaha Community Care Council.

A new grant aims to change the dynamics between academic health centers and the community, starting in south Omaha.

The Plaza Partnership is a three-year, National Institutes of Health-funded collaborative project between:

• OneWorld Community Health Center;
  
• The South Omaha Community Care Council;
  
• The Douglas County Health Department; and
  
• UNMC.

“South Omaha is excited to be an equal partner in this endeavor to increase communication, build trust and ultimately engage in a new generation of mutually beneficial health research,” said Cervantes, who is a community research associate for the partnership.

“Health sciences research often is driven by academic interests, which may not be aligned with the health-related issues of greatest concern in places where people live and work every day,” said Magda Peck, Sc.D., principal investigator for the project and associate dean for community engagement and public health practice in UNMC’s College of Public Health.

The Plaza Partnership will:

• Inform community members about research’s ability to improve health, and educate academic researchers about the benefits of and best approaches for community partnerships;
  
• Create an integrated data infrastructure to support collaborative research and produce a clearer picture of health issues in south Omaha; and
  
• Support research design teams drawn from the partnering organizations that will develop funding proposals to address priority community health issues.

The approach should let UNMC and the Plaza Partners generate research designed to find fresh answers to south Omaha’s critical health concerns, Dr. Peck said.
And this will be one step toward healing the past and moving community research into the future.