Creating Community-Academic Partnerships for Research: The Value of Assessing Research Readiness

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an approach that involves community members and stakeholders in the full continuum of the research process. This includes steps from conceptualization through data analysis and dissemination. The application of CBPR methodologies however, requires community partners to be “ready” to participate in the research process. That is, partners need an understanding of research terminology, goals, and techniques that support their involvement in these efforts. In this project, we sought to understand research readiness as it applied to several community partners and determine common themes that would serve to facilitate the progress of conducting research.

The Institute for Community Health (ICH), a public health research and evaluation organization, with funding through a Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA) at Harvard University, distributed competitive planning grants of up to $5000 to community partners in order to seed community-academic partnerships for research. The grants were intended to fund meetings and networking sessions to refine research questions, and support administration such as food and stipends for participants involved in preliminary data collection efforts.

A number of unexpected outcomes ensued from the planning grant process. To improve future efforts, an evaluation was conducted focused on barriers and facilitators to participation in planning grants. Data was collected via key informant interviews, content analysis of planning grant applications and review of meeting notes. These data were then used to create criteria to evaluate “research readiness” and to craft recommendations on how to revise the planning grant process and build community-academic partnerships for research.