Enhancing Research Readiness of a Grassroot Community-Based Service Provider Organization through Individualized Coaching By Experienced CBPR Practitioners in EAST Harlem, New York City

Engagement in research is not a core activity carried out by grassroots community-based service provider organizations (CBO) whose mission is to connect vulnerable and special needs populations to the services they need the most.  However, when CBOs are interested in engaging in research but lack the strategies, know-how, and tools to do so they become vulnerable to experiencing the research process in an inequitable and unjust manner. In an effort to reduce the vulnerability of such CBOs in research and to establish partnerships/relationships with research institutions, the Harlem Community & Academic Partnership (HCAP), Inc., a longstanding community-based partnership that uses the Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach in its research and policy work, provides individualized coaching to enhance research readiness to local grassroots CBOs. Experienced HCAP community and academic members in CBPR partner with a CBO based on shared research interests. Over the past two years, HCAP has coached SMART, New York City’s premier community-based HIV treatment education organization run by and for HIV+ women, in becoming a research-ready organization. The coaching relationship between HCAP and SMART has focused on designing an organizational concept model, logic model, an inventory and assessment of data collected, involvement in a research grant proposal, and the opportunity to conduct creative projects aimed at branding the message of SMART to enhance its visibility in the HIV/AIDS funding community.