Partnering with communities in research: The Philadelphia Ujima experience

Introduction: The Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia Ujima Health Collaborative (funded by the Office on Women's Health) utilizes a community participatory framework to address health care access, heart health, diabetes prevention and control, nutrition, fitness and cancer screening in underserved communities. This program provides an innovative approach to health promotion that addresses barriers to community engagement and improving health behaviors. Methods: Community sites were recruited to participate in the project. Sites completed a capacity assessment, identified priority areas and tailored programming to accommodate site specific logistics. Academic partners provided technical assistance to assist with such tasks as budget development. Site liaisons facilitated the process of collaboration. Community partner sites were engaged at every part of the process, including development of partner defined measures of quality, evaluation design, assessment instruments, data collection and dissemination of findings. Results: The program has been successful in promoting health behaviors including access to health care, screenings, healthy eating practices and fitness due to community engagement. Sites also identified institutional barriers and developed health promotion projects to help disseminate and expand the health promotion messages to others in their community. Initial site partners also expanded the programming to others in their network, which expanded the work of the collaborative initiative overall. Conclusions/ Lessons Learned – Effective community/academic partnerships using community participatory approaches embedding principles of cultural humility can aid in improving health behaviors. Lessons learned will be used to develop a replicable model of advocacy to promote health of communities.