Partnering for social change: An iterative participatory community health assessment in Chicago's Little Village

Best practice in local community health assessment requires both authentic engagement of those most knowledgeable of the health and determinants of health of community residents, as well as academic guidance through a community-based research protocol, and theoretical constructs of how neighborhoods impact health. The Little Village Participatory Community Health Assessment relies on a strong community-academic partnership founded in shared interests in action research toward understanding root causes of neighborhood health in the predominately Mexican Immigrant community on Chicago’s southwest side. Principles guiding our community health assessment effort will be shared along with a set of lessons learned that have strengthened both our partnership and the quality of the research. Lessons will be shared across three categories:  (1) mixed methods measurement, research approach and data analysis, (2) translation and discourse (3) and shared learning, unpacking local evidence of social phenomenon - Latino Paradox, Migration and Health, Stress and Coping.  By allowing a flexible, adaptive approach to partnering and learning from our mistakes, our collaboration has grown to provide a healthy infrastructure, setting the stage to engage in ongoing, productive sustainable academic-community-based participatory research.