Banishing barriers in partnerships: Improving trust and knowledge of community-based participatory research

BACKGROUND: Assessment of Local Environmental Risk Training (ALERT) to reduce health disparities is a training and education project designed to foster community-academic partnerships in addressing air-quality issues in two underserved communities in Los Angeles. The overall goal of the ALERT project is to build trust between researchers and communities through capacity building. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: ALERT conducted two 4-day train-the-trainer (TTT) workshops for community representatives and one convening for researchers, in order to identify and remove barriers to partnerships between researchers and communities, as well as to increase knowledge of community-based participatory research (CBPR). Those workshops and convening also provided a means to increase contact and foster trusts between researchers and communities. RESULTS: The top three unique barriers reported by community representatives, with respect to research partnerships, were funding for staff time, lack of child care, and time commitment. For researchers, the top three unique barriers reported were the perception in academia that CBPR lacks methodological rigor and objectivity, lack of funding, and lack of institutional support. For the common barriers, community representatives were more likely than researchers to report “feelings of mistrust between community and researchers” and “power imbalance between community and researchers.” Community representatives reported significant increases in knowledge of CBPR and in trust measures after participating in the TTT course. CONCLUSIONS: Removing existing barriers to community-research partnerships is a vital component to improving CBPR. The TTT curriculum seems to be effective in increasing community participants' knowledge of CBPR and trusts towards researchers. Similar programs are needed for researchers.