Community-Based participatory pesearch for cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention in African Americans

Each year thousands of African Americans experience morbidity and mortality from several chronic diseases. National studies continue to demonstrate that African Americans are at greater risk than non-Hispanic whites for developing most forms of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Health promotion programs developed to improve outcomes in this population include community-based programs that provide education and training on strategies for eating a healthy diet and being more physically active. However, community stakeholders and organizations may not be actively involved in the development or evaluation of these approaches. To address this issue, we developed an academic-community partnership called the West Philadelphia Consortium to Address Disparities. This Consortium consists of four community-based organizations in Philadelphia and academic researchers and staff from the University of Pennsylvania. Consistent with the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), the partnership was developed to facilitate collaboration between community and academic members on research efforts to address the health priorities and concerns of community residents. We developed and implemented collaborative efforts to identify the health priorities and concerns of African American residents in West and Southwest Philadelphia. Community and academic members of the partnership share responsibility for developing the intervention and monitoring accrual to the study. Collaboration on these issues, and strategic direction for the partnership, is achieved through regular meetings of the Executive Committee, which consists of academic and community members of the partnership. Through these efforts and organizational components, we have developed an integrated risk counseling program that is being evaluated as part of a randomized trial.