Community Grand Rounds: An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Community and University Partners on Chicago's South Side Addressing Social Determinants of Health

Community residents and faculty from the University of Chicago have created a series of educational seminars called Community Grand Rounds (CGR) which are held within community settings that are designed to address health disparities within urban areas. The planning and implementation was achieved through solicitation of community members to provide their perspectives and insights into the development of future interventions through a community engagement model.

A bidirectional communications process was established with community members that helped to influence transdisciplinary health investigations at the University of Chicago. This process began by hiring community residents to serve as consultants that determined the topics that were to be discussed during each CGR based on the needs of their communities.

Once the relevant issues associated with the selected topics of the communities were established, the community consultants helped to create the format and the content for each CGR. Each of the communities represented agreed to host a CGR in their respective community. All of the Community Grand Rounds involved educational opportunities that included resource materials and relevant data. At the conclusion of the series for the fiscal year, a protocol was developed to evaluate CGR and the processes associated with the series. Each community consultant was individually interviewed and participated in a focus group with other community consultants to best define their experience working with university investigators and staff. The opinions and viewpoints expressed by the community consultants about the community engagement process from start to completion were also documented to improve the process.