Evaluation of a community-based participatory research partnership process: The Detroit Healthy Environments Partnership

There has been increasing recognition that community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a viable approach to address racial and ethnic disparities in health. Assessing and documenting the extent to which a CBPR process is collaborative, participatory, and effective at achieving intermediate objectives can happen long before evaluating the partnership's impact on health and achievement of its ultimate goals. The Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP) is a CBPR partnership that has been working since 2000 to examine and address relationships between environmental conditions and cardiovascular health in three ethnically-diverse Detroit communities. The CBPR process used in HEP involves equitable engagement of representatives from community-based organizations, health service organizations, and academic institutions in all phases of the research and intervention process. In this presentation, we describe a conceptual framework for assessing CBPR partnerships, and we discuss the development and results of in-depth interviews conducted with members of the HEP Steering Committee as one component of a participatory and formative evaluation of the CBPR partnership process. We will present the major partnership themes that were identified from the grounded analysis of these in-depth interviews and report key actions identified by the group to strengthen and sustain the partnership. We will also discuss lessons learned and implications of using qualitative interviews and participatory methods to evaluate and strengthen CBPR partnerships. Members identified that shared leadership, co-dissemination of research findings, and capacity-building were partnership strengths that laid the groundwork for planning policy activities in fulfillment of partnership goals to improve cardiovascular health at multiple ecologic levels.