Research on Health Disparities: Perspectives of the Community

The principal objectives of the Detroit Dental Health Project were to understand and eliminate the extent and causes of oral health disparities among low-income, African-American children and their caregivers in the city of Detroit. The project was modeled upon the principles of community-based participatory research, which prescribes the process of scientific inquiry as being a symbiosis and collaboration between community representatives and researchers To understand the rationale behind the CBPR model, from the community's perspective, why should a largely low-income, African American population embrace research that only contributes to the scientific understanding of health disparities while doing nothing to address the conditions in the community on which it focuses? Communities need to be stakeholders in the process of conducting research, and concurrently, researchers should be instrumental in designing demonstration projects that apply findings of the research to positively affect the quality of life in communities.

Any strategy to reduce oral health disparities must be predicated upon bringing providers, academic organizations, researchers and communities together in an effort to reduce disparities. Research should be the commensurability of interest between groups in solving problems. The community's interest lies in being able to access culturally appropriate health services that target the disparity in more informed and effective ways.