Changing the shot-gun marriage approach to community engagement

Background: Community participatory research has become a required strategy in much of the Federally funded research focused on health, education, economic development and other issues in minority communities. Although the will may be there, projects which are funded through academic institutions face many challenges in terms of engaging community partners. Two of the most contentious issues are who controls and allocates project funds and who manages the implementation of activities at the community level. Methods: A CDC funded project, with the university as lead organization, required that 10% of the budget be given to community organizations to fund local programs developed, managed, and evaluated by each organization to address health disparities in diabetes and cardiovascular disease among African Americans and Latinos. We are assessing this strategy as a mechanism for addressing the challenges of engaging the community in a university-administered initiative, comparing community participation to a previous project in which the university specified the tasks required for each community partner. Results: Providing community organizations with their own funds and empowering them to manage and implement a local project they have developed increased the organizations' active participation in coalition meetings and on the working committees established to accomplish the work of the overall project, compared to the earlier effort's lack of active community engagement. Conclusions: Empowering community partners with decision making responsibility, coupled with technical assistance and networking opportunities, appears to be an effective strategy for engaging them in the work of a university-based project addressing health disparities.