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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Joseph Hughey, PhD, Architecture Urban Planning and Design; Psychology, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 4823 Troost, rm 123, Kansas City, MO 64110, 816.235.5865, hugheyj@umkc.edu and N. Andrew Peterson, PhD, Department of Community and Behavioral Health, University of Iowa, 1215 Westlawn, iowa city, IA 52242.

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a strongly emerging force for health promotion that draws heavily on health education concepts such as empowerment (Peterson & Zimmerman, 2004), diversity (Watts 1994), power, and liberation (Prilleltensky, 2003). CBPR values authentic partnerships between researchers and community members jointly engaged to address community agendas (Minkler & Wallerstein, 1998). This presentation describes CBPR processes and underlying principles guiding a community mobilization organization seeking to produce individual transformation and outcomes in the built environment and policy. The presentation describes a generalizable four-stage, cyclical process of CBPR rooted in Lewinian action research (assessment, research, action, and evaluation), and it will elucidate three underlying principles of practice that emerged through the Livable Neighborhoods Campaign, a five-year effort that successfully built a coalition of urban religious organizations. The process was characterized by agendas shaped by grassroots participants; it was structured to yield specific results, and it publicly challenged institutions to work collaboratively to enact a broad-based vision of a healthy community. The campaign successfully moved on multiple community issues e.g., dangerous buildings, health and property codes enforcement, violence prevention, and street lighting. Three guiding principles focused on individual empowerment, development of empowered organizations, and sustainable community action for power. Outcomes at individual, organizational and community levels as well as five implications for practice will be described. Practice implications: adherence to discipline of process; no one-to-one relationship between research and action; model and principles can be used to develop capacity at multiple levels, i.e., individual, organization, community; model transcends issues.

Learning Objectives: