Working together
We carefully selected the term 'Consortium' to describe the shared nature of our mission. Merriam-Webster defines a consortium as "an agreement, combination, or group [...] formed to undertake an enterprise beyond the resources of any one member" and Wikipedia adds that consortiums have "the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for a common goal." The explicit focus of Hunter College's PRIDE Health Research Consortium is to serve as a common hub to bring together the collective knowledge of researchers, community organizations, practitioners, policymakers, and members of the community; our objective is to provide a common set of core resources to reinforce our mutually shared goal of achieving health equity for SGM communities. We are working on centralizing resources to synergize across multiple units (e.g., labs, centers, groups) within Hunter College and support the work of our partners outside of Hunter.
Unlike centers and institutes, which themselves are the primary organization or entity, a consortium has a distinct and broader focus: bring together the work of multiple organizations and stakeholders to provide the common space and shared resources necessary to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is what we strive to do.