Experiences of residents involved in community/university CBPR partnership: Challenges and opportunities

The Engaging Richmond project is a community/university CBPR project working to capture community input on social determinants of health in Richmond neighborhoods. The partnership team consists of ten residents of a low-income African American community in the City of Richmond, three local service providers, two students of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with ties to the study community, and five VCU faculty/staff. With 12-months funding to complete our project objectives, we faced many challenges in assembling a team and building a trusting and effective partnership while also collecting and analyzing data and identifying potential policy and programmatic changes to benefit the community. Building trust and being productive were made more difficult by a complex history of interventions in this community that impacted expectations among residents. This session focuses on team members' perspectives on the success of the partnership in building trust and meeting member expectations, as well as building community capacity and increasing the skills and community involvement of team members. Evaluation of these outcomes consists of analysis of pre-and post test questionnaires, in-depth exit interviews with team members, and analysis of data from a closed-ended questionnaire on group processes, dynamics and outcomes using the CBPR evaluation instrument by Schulz et al. In-depth interviews focus on participant expectations and experiences, personal and project outcomes, the CBPR process, and future plans for community engagement. Results focus on identifying successful features of the project, challenges to overcome in similar projects, and the range of experiences reported by resident members of the CBPR team.