Partnering with African American public housing residents to conduct smoking cessation research: Challenges and opportunity

Challenges experienced by researchers when partnering with African American public housing residents to conduct smoking cessation research have been documented. These partnerships have been fraught with negative research experiences - lack of presence in the community and not being upfront about researcher expectations and intentions, to name a few. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a promising, culturally appropriate strategy needed to engage the residents in research. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the use of CBPR and community engagement principles and the challenges faced by the residents and the researcher when developing a smoking cessation research agenda. The partnership was formed during prior community-university initiatives that led to the researcher's receipt of an NIH Career Development Award. This award allows the researcher ample time to continually meet with the residents and engage them in the research process by conducting surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. Additionally, resident input is obtained on the use of culturally tailored cessation components. Field notes, meeting's minutes, contact logs, and participant observation all serve as the main corpus of data for this presentation. Community challenges include isolated living conditions, and the influx of “smoke shops” with custom blend tobacco and their impact on smoking behavior. On the researcher side, challenges include competing university obligations, the teaching-advising-research-service paradox, and the paucity of smoking cessation research conducted with low-income African Americans. The opportunity is to use these challenges as underpinnings for developing a community-based smoking cessation intervention for African American public housing residents.