The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #51696

Cynthia Ann Piltch, PhD, MPH, LMT, Center for Community Health Education, Research and Service (CCHERS), Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, 398 CP, Boston, MA 02115, 617-373-5588, c.piltch@nunet.neu.edu and Elmer R. Freeman, MSW, Center for Community Health Education, Research, and Service (CCHERS), Center for Community Health Education and Research Services, 716 Columbus Ave., Suite 398, Boston, MA 02120.

The Center for Community Health Education Research and Service, Inc. (CCHERS) is a partnership composed of the Boston Public Health Commission, Boston Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine, Northeastern University Bouve College of Health Sciences and fourteen community health centers in the city. Its mission is to develop academic-community partnerships to educate health care professionals, to improve health services delivery, and promote health systems change. Its mission is actualized through a network of "academic community health centers" that integrate education and research with their historic missions of service to the underserved. CCHERS serves as a vehicle for connecting academic researchers with community people, places and processes in its efforts to promote community based participatory health services and clinical research that is relevant to serving racially and ethnically diverse urban populations. Recognizing the many challenges to conducting effective community based participatory research, the presentation will focus on two case examples from the CCHERS experience of building effective research partnerships between the academy and the community. The CCHERS process of building a partnership is generally described but emphasizes that "it is a process, not an event" and is based on developing relationships over a period of time. It requires that researchers make an investment, for the long term, in the community and in the process.

Learning Objectives:

• Build partnerships on principles of mutual respect, value and benefit.
• Understand community dynamics and processes that facilitate development of research partnerships.
• Address the myriad challenges of conducting community based health services and clinical research.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.