Embracing the community engagement process post-disaster: Building capacity, political action, and trust

Community-based participatory research emphasizes collaborative partnerships to address community needs as well as build capacity and establish trust between communities and institutions. The University of South Carolina/Tulane University-Graniteville community developed a partnership immediately following a train derailment and chlorine spill that killed nine residents and injured hundreds more. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the community engagement process used by Graniteville community members and the research team.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Principles of Community Engagement are used to describe the community engagement process.

Principles are organized as items to consider prior to beginning the engagement process, items that describe what is necessary for engagement to occur, and items that include what to consider for engagement to succeed with corresponding details highlighted about engaging the Graniteville community. Successful outcomes of the community-university partnership include capacity building, political action, and increased trust of community “outsiders”. Challenges include negative attention and mistrust, timing of grant support, political fracturing, and burn out.

Academic institutions and community members can successfully partner to garner resources and effect positive, long-term impact. We present our experience as a practical application to promote community engagement efforts widely, particularly in underserved and under-resourced areas in the aftermath of a devastating disaster. It is our aim that this serves as an example of a practical application of a community-university engagement process to assist health professionals, researchers, policy makers, and community leaders in planning, implementing, and evaluating community engagement efforts.