Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Assessing the Impact of a Policy Advocacy Training Project

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.

In this presentation, we will describe and analyze the results from an impact evaluation of the NWP project that involved a 4-session series of workshops carried out by community and academic trainers in 7 neighborhoods in Detroit with approximately 225 participants – almost half of whom were youth. We conducted eight group interviews (four each with adults and youth) five months after the workshops with participants who had attended at least two training sessions and were involved in policy advocacy activities. We will describe the data collection and analysis methods used. Findings will be presented, including: impact of training on participants' policy activities; facilitating factors and barriers that affect community residents' ability to engage in policy efforts; and recommendations for future training. We will discuss lessons learned and how the results can inform strategies to increase community residents' involvement in policy advocacy.