Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Building capacity of adults and youth for policy change in Detroit - Challenges and Lessons Learned

There have been increasing calls for community-academic-practice partnerships to have a broader effect on health through engaging the participation of community members in policy advocacy. Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Building Capacity for Policy Change (NWP), a project of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC) in partnership with PolicyLink, aims to enhance the capacity of neighborhood residents and organizations to engage in the policy change process to positively impact the health of families in Detroit. The URC is a community-based participatory research partnership which builds upon the strengths of the communities involved, to conduct etiologic research, public health interventions, and policy advocacy aimed at understanding and addressing health inequities.

Drawing upon qualitative and quantitative evaluation data, this presentation addresses the challenges, facilitating factors, and lessons learned from the development and implementation of a 4-session series of workshops facilitated by community and academic trainers in 7 Detroit neighborhoods with approximately 225 participants - -almost half of whom were youth. The challenges we experienced included: dealing with logistics (e.g., conducting four-session training programs in different communities); developing the curriculum (choosing appropriate policy examples), and, integrating adults and youth in the same training sessions. The facilitating factors and lessons learned from conducting these sessions involved: time management for small group policy exercises; community trainer selection; integration of training sessions where communities were already organizing around policy objectives; and, the importance of working within a well-functioning community-academic partnership. Based on results presented, we will discuss implications for conducting policy advocacy capacity building efforts.