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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Doug Taylor, PhD, Southeast Community Research Center, 2299 Hosea L. Williams Dr., Atlanta, GA 30317, 404-373-8833, D.Taylor@CBPR.org and Diane L. Rowley, MD, MPH, Morehouse College, Research Center on Health Disparities, 830 Westview Dr SW, Atlanta, GA 30314.

The southeastern states rank in the bottom third of the US for all major health indicators. Complex social and political structures targeted against the working class and people of color obstruct communities in the region from taking steps to improve health. As with Hurricane Katrina, the south's disaster of bad health has roots in the region's politics, culture, economics, and anemic concern for human rights. The New Tools New Vision (NTNV) project, a collaboration among community-based organizations and Historically Black Colleges and Universities employs a community-based participatory approach to develop and implement holistic strategies to reduce health disparities in five sites across Georgia. The first phase of the project has communities design pilot projects to build partnerships and identify specific health issues. Results of this phase will be used to develop new community-driven methods and approaches to designing and implementing policy initiatives in the next phase. Project elements address capacity building for researchers and community organizations, refining facets of CBPR suited to the South and communities of color, and providing a mechanism for community members to expand the meaning and scope of public health research ethics, specifically to address issues of environmental and health injustice, political exclusion and inequitable resource allocation.

This presentation will discuss lessons learned and successes and challenges of NTNV in the project's first two years. Particular focus will be on the creation of community-university partnerships, challenges of power sharing and democratic decision-making, and added pressures impeding such partnerships in the South's political and cultural environment

Learning Objectives: Participants will

• Gain broader understanding of challenges to and successful strategies for creating community-university partnerships in marginalized populations and areas.
• Review specific participatory methods employed by project to reduce health disparities within a larger strategy for social justice and policy change.
• Discuss and critique proposed steps to move from project to policy in a participatory environment.

Keywords: Community-Based Partnership, Policy/Policy Development

Related Web page: www.CBPR.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No