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ABSTRACT
Community-academic research partnerships have evolved as a multidisciplinary approach to involve those communities experiencing health disparities in the development, implementation, and evaluation of health interventions. Community-academic partnerships are intended to bring together academic researchers and communities to share power, establish trust, foster colearning, enhance strengths and resources, build community capacity, and address community-identified needs and health problems. The purpose of this chapter is to review the current state of communityacademic research partnerships in the United States and Canada. We discuss contextual issues; present a review of the current literature; identify the major strengths, challenges, and lessons learned that have emerged during the course of these research collaborations; and explore implications for future research and policy.
Keywords: community-academic partnerships; community capacity building; health disparities; vulnerable populations
INTRODUCTION
Purpose
Nursing, through community health nursing, has been involved in the effort to improve the health of vulnerable and at-risk communities in the United States since the late 1800s (Portillo & Waters, 2004). Involving the community as an active partner in its own health promotion and disease prevention has been recognized as an important model in community health nursing since the later part of the 20th century and continues to be a core component of most undergraduate nursing education curriculums. More recently, community-academic research partnerships, also known as Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), have evolved as a multidisciplinary approach to involve communities in the development, implementation, and evaluation of health interventions. Recognition of the relevance of this approach to research can be found in the increasing number of participatory research courses taught in schools of nursing, public health, sociology, social work, and psychology (Israel, Eng, Schulz, & Parker, 2005).
Research-based intervention programs that are thought to be well-constructed and carefully implemented usually have very little impact if they are not culturally sensitive and specific to the target population's needs and life concerns. The inclusion of communities helps to develop more effective and culturally relevant health interventions for vulnerable populations, which experience a myriad of health disparities. Community-academic research partnerships have the potential to address many of the shortcomings of solely academic based research. As marginalized and disenfranchised groups have multiple reasons to mistrust academic health researchers and their interventions, community-academic research partnerships have emerged as a viable method...