Building collaborative health promotion partnerships: The Jackson Heart Study

Introduction: Building a collaborative health promotion partnership that effectively employs principles of CBPR involves many dimensions. There is a need to recognize opportunities for change and to acquire the resources to make the changes happen. To ensure that the changes would be long-lasting, it is imperative that partnerships be configured to include groups of diverse community representatives who can together develop a vision for long-term lasting change. The objective of this project is to enumerate processes used by the Jackson Heart Study (JHS) Community Outreach Center (CORC) to create strong, viable partnerships that produce lasting change.

Methods: JHS CORC joined with community representatives to initiate programs that evolved into comprehensive strategies for addressing health disparities and the high prevalence of CVD. This collaboration was made possible by first promoting an understanding of the need for combined effort, the desire to interact with other community partners, and the vision to establish an effective governance structure.

Results: The partnership between JHS CORC and the Jackson Heart Study community has empowered community members, and has inspired some community members to begin to provide leadership to other health promotion projects.

Conclusion: It is important for academic institutions to reach out to local community groups to work together to address local health issues that affect the community. It does not matter who initiates the collaboration. When a community becomes aware of an urgent need for change to respond to negative health conditions, formalizing this type of collaboration is a logical step in the right direction.