The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #66997

Community Partnerships for Prevention Research Group, c/o Sarena Seifer, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, University of WA School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UW Box 354809, Seattle, WA 98195-4809, 206-616-4305, sarena@u.washington.edu

Partnerships between communities, universities and public health agencies have become central to the national public health practice and research agenda. With funding from the Prevention Research Center Program Office, through a cooperative agreement between the Association of Schools of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the project “Examining Community Partnerships for Prevention Research” identifies and synthesizes what is known about community-academic collaborations in prevention research and will develop and evaluate strategies to foster community and institutional capacity for participatory research at national and local levels. This presentation will report on the collaborative efforts and important outcomes of the nine partner organizations which have followed a participatory process, involving community partners and academic partners in all aspects of the “Examining Community Partnerships...” project. This research group has synthesized what is known from the published literature, recent studies and the collective experiences of community-based prevention research partnerships. In addition, our group has mobilized key constituencies to develop and implement a strategic action plan to build the capacity of communities and institutions to engage in participatory approaches to public health prevention research. The project’s ultimate goal is to facilitate approaches for effectively translating community interventions in public health and prevention into widespread practice at the community level. Through community-institutional partnerships for prevention research, new knowledge about the social and ecologic determinants of health will be gained, priority health issues from the community’s perspective will be increasingly addressed, and the public’s health will be improved.

Learning Objectives:

• Through this interactive oral presentation, participants will be able to:
• *Define successful community-academic partnerships for participatory public health research.
• *Describe the outcomes of community-academic research efforts that serve as indicators of successful partnerships.
• *Describe the findings from across multiple interdisciplinary projects that are involved in this project.
• *Identify strategies to build the capacity of communities and institutions to engage in participatory approaches to public health prevention research.

Keywords: Community-Based Partnership, Public Health Research

Related Web page: futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/researchprojects.html#ExaminingCommunityPartnerships

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.