Research to improve the health of communities benefits from the involvement of community members. Accordingly, major federal and foundation funding agencies are soliciting health promotion/disease prevention programme proposals that require active community participation. However, creating such partnerships is difficult. Communities often perceive conventional research as paternalistic, irrelevant to their needs, manipulative, secretive and invasive of privacy. Many institutions and researchers view community knowledge as lacking in value. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative partnership approach to research that equitably involves community members, organizational representatives and researchers in all aspects of the research process. In this article the authors consider the barriers to institutional change and faculty participation in CBPR, and propose some steps for overcoming the barriers and making CBPR an integral part of a medical institution's research agenda. Training and supporting faculty in the philosophy and methods of this approach is the cornerstone of improved community-based research.

Purpose:As the United States health care model progresses towards medical teams and the country’s population continues to diversify, the need for health professional education programs to develop and implement culturally specific interprofessional education (IPE) becomes increasingly imperative. A wide range of models exists for delivering and implementing IPE in health education, but none have included the cultural components that are vital in educating the health professional.Methods:A cross-cultural decentralized IPE model for physician assistant (PA) and physical therapy (PT) students was developed. This three-part IPE series was created using an established cultural curricular model and began with the exploration of self, continued with the examination of various dimensions of culture, and concluded with the exploration of the intersection between health and culture. We assessed student satisfaction of the IPE experiences and students’ engagement and attitudes towards IPE using a three-item open-ended questionnaire administered after each cross-cultural activity and the Interprofessional Education Series Survey (IESS) upon the completion of the series.Results:IESS responses showed that PA and PT students reported benefits in interprofessional collaboration and cultural awareness and expressed overall satisfaction with the series. Qualitative analysis revealed growth in student response depth consistent with the scaffolded focus of each IPE module in the series.Conclusion:The trends in this three-part series suggest that institutions looking to develop culturally inclusive IPE educational initiatives may have success through a decentralized model mirroring the effective cultural progression focused on addressing exploration of self, examination of various dimensions of culture, and exploration of the intersection between health and culture.

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This article explains a partnership-based community education model, which uses as an example a partnership between the Center for Healthy Communities in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) and the rural Marion area of central Wisconsin. MCW is similar to other medical schools in that it has a strong history and philosophy of placing students in communities for educational purposes. This article describes how the Center for Healthy Communities is moving beyond student placement to true partnership building. The center followed four stages of development as it built a partnership with this rural Wisconsin community: (1) establish and build relationships, (2) develop common goals, (3) develop and implement programs and (4) maintain and expand progress. The center also applied a set of principles in developing the partnership. By following the stages and applying the principles, the center found that two elements were key to building a partnership for medical student education and community health improvement: long-term commitment and ability and willingness to spend time in the community. As a result, a meaningful, ongoing partnership developed that benefits both the community and MCW.