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

Abstract #107787

Holly Felix, MPA, College of Public Health, Health Policy and Management, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, 4301 West Markham Street, Slot 820, Little Rock, AR 72205, 501-526-6626, felixholly@uams.edu

Over the last 25 years, there has been increasing recognition of the value of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to understanding and addressing public health issues. Despite this recognition and calls for its use, philanthropic and governmental financial support for it as a research approach has been limited. A few notable exceptions exist. In 1995, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) created a CBPR initiative. But how did this policy idea's time come? Kingdon developed a policy streams model that suggests a policy occurs as the result of a problem stream, a political stream and a policy stream converging, usually with the aid of a policy entrepreneur, at a window of opportunity. Using Kingdon's model as an analytical framework, a qualitative study was undertaken to document how and why the NIEHS' CBPR program was developed. The purposes of this research was to provide a historical analysis of the program's development and to provide direction to others interested in advocating for the development of new CBPR programs (or other policies and programs). Secondarily, this work was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the Kingdon model in explaining how a policy came about. This presentation will describe this research effort, the preliminary findings, and implications for how this development process may be replicated.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the components of the policy streams model
• Describe the development of the CBPR program at NIEHS using this model
• Apply lessons learned for future program and policy development.

Keywords: Community-Based Public Health, Funding

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.