Detroit Center for Community-based Policymaking: A Collaborative Structure for Policy Innovation and Sustainable Governance

As the founding Director of a new nonprofit, I am working with Detroit community colleagues from the nonprofit, artistic, community health, academic, and sustainable business sectors to develop the Detroit Center for Community-driven Policymaking. Although community-based participatory research (CBPR) has become a recognized component of many community health partnerships, the limitations of CBPR in relation to achieving community-driven policy and action goals have been noted in scholarship on CBPR. This Center provides a new model for engaging practices of participatory action research within a more community-driven framework grounded in community organizing and planning, and shaped by the energies, vision, and priorities of Detroit's communities. By providing an institutional support structure for community organizers to develop city-wide campaigns of policy innovation and transformation, the Center allows community policy work to be initiated and sustained independent of cycles of research funding and the limitations of university-based research agendas. Grounded in community organizing strategies, the work of the Center will be supported and strengthened by, but not dependent on, the participatory action research of affiliated researchers from local universities and community organizations. This presentation will describe the origins and structure of this Center, as well as the ways it functions to coordinate community organizing with community-driven participatory research and planning to achieve the objectives of health equity and sustainable development in Detroit.