Enhancing capacity to use community-based participatory research for social justice: Developing an interactive CD-ROM as a teaching and dissemination tool

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a partnership approach to research that equitably engages community and academic partners in all aspects of research with the aim of improving community health. While there is growing recognition that CBPR can play an important role in addressing health inequities and contributing to social justice, many researchers have limited access to training in the approach. Technology-based tools may expand the teaching and dissemination of CBPR, towards enhancing capacity to reduce health inequities.

The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC) is a long-standing CBPR partnership that has been engaged for 15 years in conducting CBPR, developing methods, disseminating and applying results, and building CBPR skills and knowledge through courses, presentations, publications, and mentored training. Building on this base, the URC embarked on a participatory effort to develop an interactive CD-ROM to train researchers from diverse fields who are in the early stages of considering or using CBPR. Insights and images from the URC and affiliated projects were used throughout, and interactive case study activities were designed so learners could engage more actively as an individual or as a group.

In this presentation we describe the rationale for developing an interactive CD-ROM as a teaching/dissemination platform for CBPR. We present the CBPR approach used to design, develop, implement, pilot, and distribute this tool. We discuss facilitating factors, challenges, and benefits of this project; lessons learned by the URC partnership; feedback received; and implications for enhancing capacity to engage in CBPR using a computer-based technology.