Common issues, different approaches: strategies for community–academic partnership development

Abstract

Communities around the United States face many challenging health problems whose complexity makes them increasingly unresponsive to traditional single-solution approaches. Multiple approaches have considered ways to understand these health issues and devise interventions that work. One such approach is community-based participatory research. This article describes the development of a new collaborative partnership between a school of nursing and an urban social service agency using community-based participatory research as a framework. We describe the partnership's evolution and process of data collection and analysis and evaluate the outcomes of both. We argue that community-based participatory research involves partnerships at its core whose members, both as individuals and part of the collaboration, must be committed and nimble in the face of shifting and challenging health and social problems, recognize common issues and concerns across the boundaries of community and academia, and respect each other's different approaches and expertise.

Investigating Health Disparities through Community-Based Participatory Research: Lessons Learned from a Process Evaluation

“…Concerns persist about whether enduring skepticism and mistrust may partially or substantially explain the low participation rates of people of color in medical research (Corbie-Smith, Thomas, & St. George, 2002; Corbie-Smith, Thomas, Williams, & Moody-Ayers, 1999). Community-based participatory research (CBPR), which involves partnering with the community to identify and address problems regarded as important to its residents, has been shown to be successful in recruiting and retaining minority participants for inclusion in research (Baiardi, Brush, & Lapides, 2010; Berge & Mendenhall, 2009; Israel et al, 2010; Jernigan, 2010; Mendenhall et al, 2010). …”

“…However, when individuals indigenous to the community assume leadership positions as community advisory board members or community health advocates, for example, trusting relationships are more easily developed, and confidence in the value of the research to the community is supported and maintained (Baiardi et al, 2010; Story et al, 2010). Researchers have also emphasized the great importance of having the right individuals from the partnership in leadership roles to provide project stewardship from within and across every involved entity (Amey & Brown, 2005).…”

A Model for Strengthening Collaborative Research Capacity

“…As part of the co-learning involved in CBPR, academic partners can transfer skills to community partners through training and experiential learning. In turn, academicians must acknowledge non-traditional skills and assets brought to the team by the community partner, such as understanding the local culture, connections to formal and informal community leaders, knowledge of community history, and access to priority populations (Baiardi et al, 2010). Academic partners, even experienced researchers, may lack skills in conducting and negotiating CBPR within the traditional academic setting.…”

A Community–Academic Partnership for School‐Based Nonviolence Education: The Healthy Power Program

“…For this discussion, a community–academic partnership is defined as a collaborative relationship that exists between a community‐based agency and college or university. There are a number of examples of community–academic partnerships described in the literature . Partnerships are valuable for achieving improved health through shared knowledge, resources, and skills .…”