Community voices: Community partner perspectives on benefits, challenges, facilitating factors and lessons learned from community-based participatory research partnerships

There is a growing body of literature on community-based participatory research (CBPR) and the role of community-academic partnerships, much of which has involved community partners in the conceptualization and preparation of publications. In addition, as discussed in much of this literature, one of the core principles of CBPR is an emphasis on co-learning and capacity building that recognizes the value of both community and academic partners as “learners” and “teachers” with the need for capacity building in each setting. At the same time, there has been a relative dearth of solely community voices addressing these topics, given the other roles and responsibilities which community members and leaders of community-based organizations have. The purpose of this presentation is to share the perspectives of three long-time (over 17 years) community partners involved in the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center and its affiliated partnerships. These partnerships build upon community strengths, to conduct etiologic research, public health interventions, and policy advocacy aimed at understanding and addressing health inequities.

In this presentation, we community partners will provide our assessment of: the benefits and challenges in using a CBPR approach - at the personal, organizational and community levels; and the factors that facilitate effective partnerships. We will discuss the history of and context within which our involvement in CBPR efforts has occurred and how this has changed over time. We will describe our lessons learned through engagement in CBPR, and will present specific recommendations from a community perspective to researchers interested in conducting community-academic collaborative research.