How the Community Views Success: Closing the gap between local relevancy and academic standards

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) proscribes that community participants' interests in engaging in health promotion and disease prevention initiatives are at par with those of academic partners. One outcome of this positive direction in public health practice is that project initiators must demonstrate "return on investment" to a wide variety of audiences for both accountability and sustainability. The dilemma is that too often, outcomes, or markers of success are not always measureable or they are distant reflections of what the community perceives as the most relevant to the issue at hand, or what is happening “on the ground”. This presentation describes efforts to derive locally defined measureable indicators as defined by the community that could be used to track success of a youth violence prevention program. Results from four focus groups and other community engagement activities conducted to plan the prevention program captured community perspectives on the success of youth violence prevention programs and revealed a total of 43 indicators that reflected community perceptions. Data that could track changes in the community-defined dimensions over time were identified for 15 of those indicators. Specifically, measures from established scales being used as part of the evaluation of the prevention program were matched to the community-derived indicators through a process of community and academic feedback. Through these efforts, we connected community perceptions and vision to rigorous measures that meet standards of evidence. This replicable process can help meet both academic and community needs for evaluative information regarding any community-based program.