Our Story

The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (Detroit URC) is a collaboration of representatives from multiple Detroit organizations and academic researchers from the University of Michigan who work together to foster health equity in the city of Detroit. Through several different Detroit URC-affiliated partnerships and projects, we work in multiple communities in Detroit, characterized by differences in history, race and ethnicity, language, economic composition, and community organization. The Detroit URC Board, composed of representatives of each of the partner organizations, oversees all aspects of the Center in accordance with a set of CBPR principles and operating norms adopted by the Detroit URC Board.

The Detroit URC was established in 1995 and funded originally through a Cooperative Agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through their Urban Research Centers Initiative. Click here for a visual timeline (PDF) of our first 20 years (1995-2015) and please visit our 20th Anniversary Symposium webpage to learn how we commemorated key successes of our first two decades. 

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