Recorded presentation

Linda Silka, PhD¹, Paulette Renault-Caragianes, BA², Dorcas Grigg-Saito, MS², and Robin Toof, MA³. (1) Center for Work, Family and Community, University of Massachusetts - Lowell, One University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01824, 978-934-4675, Linda_Silka@uml.edu, (2) Community Health, Lowell Community Health Center, 585 Merrimack St, Lowell, MA 01854, 978-937-9700, PauletteRE@lchealth.org, (3) Center for Family, Work and Community, UMASS Lowell, 600 Suffolk Street, Lowell, MA 01854

Developing community-based infrastructure for assessment, planning, and evaluation can be enormously difficult. One particularly useful way to approach these challenging infrastructure tasks is through partnerships between community health centers and their local universities. In this presentation we highlight a strategy used by Lowell Community Health Center with its partner, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, to meet emerging needs in a highly diverse, increasingly immigrant community with rapidly changing health care needs and severe environmental problems. Both partners have limited few resources so they have sought to identify ways using an asset-based analysis to leverage partnership opportunities. Starting as a NIEHS-funded environmental justice program, this initial relationship has come to include a multiyear CDC-funded Cambodian community health project, a Brazilian immigrant occupational health project also funded by NIEHS, research projects on Cambodian perspectives on asthma, and a HUD-funded community outreach partnership center. Each of these projects has resulted in strengthening of the infrastructure and much more interlinked assessment, planning, and evaluation. Examples of challenges and successes in building robust partnerships will be described.

Learning Objectives: The session’s four learning objectives include, to

(
• show how to assess the natural points of synergy between the two types of organizations, (
• show five ways that community health centers and universities can work together, (
• show five obstacles to partnership that are a result of institutional barriers and how they can be overcome, and (
• assist participants in identifying opportunities in their own communities for building partnerships between community health centers and local universities.

Keywords: Environmental Health, Community Planning

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.

Recorded presentation