Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #103540

Amy J. Schulz, PhD¹, Sheryl Weir, MPH¹, Barbara A. Israel, DrPh², William J. Ridella, MPH, MBA³, Mary Koch, BA⁴, Chris M. Coombe, MPH¹, J. Timothy Dvonch, PhD⁵, and Srimathi Kannan, PhD⁶. (1) Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan, School of Public Health, 1420 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, 734 615 2695, ssweir@umich.edu, (2) Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan, 1420 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2009, (3) Community Heath Services, Detroit Health Department, 1151 Taylor St, Rm 308C, Detroit, MI 48202, (4) Brightmoor Community Center, 14451 Burt Road, Detroit, MI 48223, (5) Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan, 109 Observatory St., 1608A SPH I, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029, (6) Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health Human Nutrition Program, 1420 Washington Heights, School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

The Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP) is a community-based participatory research partnership funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [R01 ES10936-01] and affiliated with the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC). HEP involves partners from health service, community-based and academic organizations in an innovative effort to understand how the social and physical environments contribute to racial and socioeconomic differences in cardiovascular risk. The Partnership emerged from a core priority of the Detroit URC, that of understanding environmental effects on the health of Detroit residents. Working within three areas of Detroit with different demographic characteristics and cardiovascular disease rates, HEP designed and implemented a stratified-random sample survey (n=918), monitored airborne particulate matter in each of the three study communities over a three year period, conducted systematic social observation in 550 blocks where survey respondents resided, and collected biomarker data for a subsample (n=367) of survey respondents. HEP partners were engaged in all aspects of the research process. In this presentation, we describe the engagement of partners in the translation of findings from the HEP study into policy and health practice. In particular, we describe how the engagement of all partners in the process of designing the research and interpreting the results contributed to the dissemination of findings related to the physical and social determinants of health, the integration of findings into ongoing policy and health practice efforts at the individual, organizational, community and policy levels of the ecological model, and toward the end of reducing disparities in cardiovascular risk.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to describe processes used to engage community-based, health practice and academic partners in joint efforts to understand the contributions of the social and physical environments to cardiovascular risk; 2. Participants will be able to describe how the above engagement in all aspects of the research contributed to dissemination and integration of findings at the individual, organizational, community and policy levels
• Participants will be able to describe potential applications of community-based participatory research efforts in the dissemination and integration of research into community health planning and policy development.

Keywords: Community-Based Partnership, Health Disparities

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.