LI Course
CE Hours: 3 contact hours

Partnership: Community-based Public Health Caucus Co-Sponsored by Community Campus Partnership for Health

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: The purpose of this Institute is to provide participants who are familiar with and possibly have some experience in CBPR learn how CBPR partnerships can promote policy change. CBPR is a systematic approach which equitably involves community and academic partners in the research process and balances research and action for the mutual benefit for all involved. CBPR was identified by the IOM as one of eight new areas in which all public health schools should provide training. This reflects in part growing concern that traditional outside expert-driven approaches often have proven poorly suited to researching and developing interventions aimed at many of today's most intractable health and social issues (e.g., homelessness, violence, chronic disease, environmental pollution). CBPR aims to ensure that all aspects of an investigation are conducted in partnership with communities, are systematic, participatory, and oriented toward meaningful social and community change. In public health, CBPR focuses on social, structural and physical environmental inequities through active involvement of community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process. CBPR has proven a promising approach for addressing such problems. Building trust, establishing relationships, conducting the work, collecting and analyzing data often provide challenges in CBPR approaches. There are many steps involved in the process of impacting local, state, or federal policy which continues to remain a great challenge for this type of work. Following a very brief review of community-based participatory research, this institute will lead participants through the different approaches to affecting policy level change within the context of a partnership. Some of the following questions will be addressed: How have different types of projects influenced policy? What types of data make the best impact on policymakers? How do we move from CBPR findings to policy change in the community? The Institute will use case studies, each of which describes different approaches as well as teach skills related to implementation of policy. The values and processes that permeate and define CBPR will be featured throughout. Participants will: a) review key principles of the participatory research approach, b) learn about issues involved in selecting a particular data collection method, and c) understand how to move from data to findings. Finally, d) they will learn how to identify the policy implications of findings. The case studies will identify the challenges, opportunities and lessons learned to facilitate partnerships’ movement toward promoting policy changes in their communities.

Session Objectives: 1. Discuss CBPR principles in conducting research with local departments of health; 2. Evaluate policy scans so that identified policies overlap with community needs 3. Discuss how participatory analytic strategies can be used to translate CBPR related work into policy recommendations

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)