was established in 1998 through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). One of 35 such centers nationwide, each of which represents an academic/community partnership, the Yale-Griffin PRC is the only center in the network based in a hospital. These centers engage in interdisciplinary applied prevention research in collaboration with community partners, federal, state, and local health and education agencies, and other universities.
The goal of all PRCs is to develop innovative approaches to health promotion and disease prevention that will directly benefit the public's health, first locally, and then nationally. PRCs use existing knowledge about health promotion and disease prevention to determine if it can be successfully applied in a community setting. Thus we are "research centers" not because we work in a laboratory, but because we measure effectiveness. We do this to seek new ways to improve community health and then share those findings with others.