"Center of Excellence for Health Disparities Research: El Centro", Victoria Mitrani, PhD, PI

The mission of El Centro is to lead and provide an infrastructure for research that addresses health disparities in the health conditions of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, family and intimate partner violence, substance abuse, and related mental health issues.


El Centro conduct research with communities of Hispanic and African descent, and sexual/gender minorities. The center aims to develop and test interventions to reduce health disparities, to train the next generation of health disparity researchers, and to collaborate with communities to ensure that available knowledge reaches the front line of practice. El Centro contains two clinical trials, “SET-R/Healthy Home” (Mitrani, PI) and “SEPA III” (Peragallo Montano, PI). El Centro is funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under Award Number P60MD002266. Grant funding for the Core activities ended in April, 2017 but study activities and data analysis are ongoing.