Building Infrastructure and Community Capacity: A Descriptive Analysis of Developmental Prevention Research Centers

Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Prevention Research Centers Program (PRC) is a network of academic health centers that conduct prevention research in collaboration with public health and community partners. To help centers build prevention research infrastructure that facilitates community engagement, the PRC Program funded five developmental centers for the first time in 2010. Developmental PRCs are expected to build infrastructure and community relationships for implementing a community-based participatory research (CBPR) pilot study. The developmental centers offer CDC technical advisors the opportunity to observe and document the process of infrastructure and community-capacity building for prevention research.

Methods: Document review and key informant interviews with at least one representative from each developmental PRC were used to qualitatively describe how developmental PRCs build infrastructure, establish community relationships, and facilitate CBPR. A grounded theory approach was used to conduct analysis.

Results: The developmental centers existing infrastructure included faculty research experience and university resources. Variation between centers was most often seen in the strength of community relationships and processes of engagement. Respondents described challenges and successes in building infrastructure, facilitating community engagement, and implementing CBPR.

Conclusion: The results from this study identify important factors needed by an academic health center to build an infrastructure and develop working relationships with a community in order to implement a CBPR study. That information can be used to provide technical assistance and guidance to future Developmental PRCs and other academic centers seeking to build their CBPR capacity.