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Improving partnerships: A community collaboration to improve self-management of hypertension among African-American veterans
Method: To create an equitable partnership, we created a process that included rapport building, role sharing expectations, team meetings and feedback. Rapport was established with conversations about a shared commitment to the intervention goals. To illustrate partnership roles and equity of duties, expectations and intervention progress were frequently discussed. We used structured and unstructured templates for obtaining Veteran feedback on story message strength in the taped storytellers and to identify the most persuasive stories. Iterative feedback about DVD development was maintained through team meetings.
Conclusion: Through our collaborative process involving active listening and feedback, we created an equitable CBPR partnership. We established early that Veterans were not research participants, but equitable partners in decision-making, which contributed to active participation and fostered rapport. Stories the researchers viewed as important were not always the ones identified by the Veterans as engaging; we came to value and respect the Veteran viewpoint as equally valid as evidence-based research strategies. Key to building and maintaining trust was showing Veterans stages of DVD development that integrated their input. These steps contributed to a CBPR process that truly incorporated Veteran perspectives into intervention development.
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Learning Objectives:
Describe a process for involving community members in intervention development.
Explain lessons learned from the process that can inform future collaborations between community members and researchers.
Keywords: African American, Community
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am Co-Investigator on federally funded grants focusing on the use of communication to improve health behaviors. Among my scientific interests is including community members into the research process.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.