About The Program

Designed to inspire and prepare early career trainees to engage in community-placed research and community-based participatory research, the Rochester Program of Research and Innovation on Disparities Education (PRIDE) is a novel interdisciplinary, experiential training program that strives to develop, refine, examine, and ultimately disseminate a new paradigm for mental health research training. Upon completing the program, trainees will have developed culturally-relevant knowledge and skills in the conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of mood disorders in diverse populations. Given that the demographic groups that constitute the emerging majority have historically been less likely to seek and receive adequate mental health care, trainees will be steeped in the practical, conceptual, and ethical considerations involved in the implementation of treatment and prevention strategies outside traditional clinical care delivery settings.

Rochester-PRIDE incorporates elements necessary to recruit minority investigators into research careers and to overcome barriers to community research. Although we will focus our training efforts on clinical psychology interns and postdoctoral fellows, medical students and residents in psychiatry and family medicine will also be eligible. Trainees will complete a didactic curriculum and will be assigned to a mentoring-precepting team. The didactic curriculum will include coursework in epidemiologic research methods currently offered in our Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, as well as a novel, year-long seminar called Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Health in the Urban Setting. Co-Directed by URMC faculty and a community collaborator, its driving premise is that mental health and mental health service utilization patterns cannot be understood apart from sociohistorical circumstances, particularly institutional racism and legal discrimination. Participatory research methods are therefore needed to give voice to the community’s needs and concerns. The interdisciplinary nature of the PRIDE training program will be showcased in this seminar, which will probe an array of topics, tightly woven around the fundamental premise. Topics will include urban history, the biological and pathophysiological implications of socioculturally engendered poverty, and the nuts and bolts of recruiting ethnic minorities into research studies.

Rochester PRIDE’s keystone is its individually-tailored mentoring and precepting program, one that is designed to help trainees develop a new knowledge-base, and to learn and practice new skills in a nurturing environment. Modeled after the mentoring program we have used in a T32 that has been active since 1988, PRIDE builds on that successful framework by placing special emphasis on the trainees’ needs for social support and community integration. This is a particularly important ingredient in a research education program to be implemented in a small and racially segregated city, Rochester, NY, that is not unlike many other cities across the United States.

We aim to enhance our trainees’ skills and knowledge base while also addressing the unique developmental and psychosocial challenges faced by junior clinical scientists, particularly those who are ethnic minorities. Each will be given the opportunity to work with 1) one or more URMC-based research mentors with expertise matched to the trainee’s interests and learning objectives, 2) a community site leader, affiliated with a community-based organization whose mission matches the trainee’s interest, and 3) a senior community preceptor. A network of renowned consultants from around the United States will travel to Rochester to offer workshops and meet individually with trainees.

Rochester PRIDE rests on a foundation of solid relationships between the Department of Psychiatry and many of the diverse ‘sub-communities’ and community agencies that constitute the City of Rochester, including the Rochester Police Department, the Ibero-American Action League, and Alternatives for Battered Women.