141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

286153
Fostering CBPR through co-learning environments

Monday, November 4, 2013 : 2:58 PM - 3:12 PM

Peggy Toy, MA , UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, Health DATA Program, Los Angeles, CA
BACKGROUND: Assessment of Local Environmental Risk Training to Reduce Health Disparities (ALERT) is a training and education project designed to foster community-academic partnerships to address disproportionate exposure to air pollution among communities of color, low-income neighborhoods, and immigrant populations in Los Angeles County. The ALERT project trains community members and groups to understand and use scientific data on air quality in their neighborhoods, while also enhancing the ability of academics and researchers to work with communities through community-based participatory research (CBPR) trainings. The ALERT project builds capacity through a 4-day train-the-trainer (TTT) course and subsequent workshops and events that include both community representatives and researchers. METHODS: Evaluation methods included a 6-month quantitative interview among community members, and 1-year qualitative interview among researchers. RESULTS: Participants in the TTT course included 54 community members and 13 researchers. At 6 months, community participants reported significant increases in knowledge of environmental health and air pollution data, increased trust towards researchers who do research in the community, and significant decreases in perceived barriers towards engaging in research partnerships, when compared to pretest scores. At one year, researcher interview themes included: ALERT helped to improve interactions with the community and having a liaison between the community and the university may help increase CBPR involvement. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from the ALERT project demonstrate that mutual engagement of researchers and community members in a co-learning environment can alter perceptions of trust, motivate relationships, and remove barriers to engaging in CBPR.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Discuss the importance of pairing both community members "on the ground" and experts in the field to identify evidence-based policy solutions to reduce exposure to air pollution and improve community health. Identify barriers to communities engaging in academic research partnerships related to environmental health. Describe how co-learning environments can foster increased trust and collaboration between researchers and communities.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been the program director of multiple federal and state funded projects to build community and academic research capacity to engage in partnerships to enhance the relevancy and accuracy of research. My public health research interests have been the development and implementation of effective CBPR projects that produce actionable findings to advance community health policies and practices.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.