A realist evaluation of community-based participatory research: partnership synergy, trust building and related ripple effects

Abstract

BackgroundCommunity-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an approach in which researchers and community stakeholders form equitable partnerships to tackle issues related to community health improvement and knowledge production. Our 2012 realist review of CBPR outcomes reported long-term effects that were touched upon but not fully explained in the retained literature. To further explore such effects, interviews were conducted with academic and community partners of partnerships retained in the review. Realist methodology was used to increase the understanding of what supports partnership synergy in successful long-term CBPR partnerships, and to further document how equitable partnerships can result in numerous benefits including the sustainability of relationships, research and solutions.MethodsBuilding on our previous realist review of CBPR, we contacted the authors of longitudinal studies of academic-community partnerships retained in the review. Twenty-four participants (community members and researchers) from 11 partnerships were interviewed. Realist logic of analysis was used, involving middle-range theory, context-mechanism-outcome configuration (CMOcs) and the concept of the ‘ripple effect’.ResultsThe analysis supports the central importance of developing and strengthening partnership synergy through trust. The ripple effect concept in conjunction with CMOcs showed that a sense of trust amongst CBPR members was a prominent mechanism leading to partnership sustainability. This in turn resulted in population-level outcomes including: (a) sustaining collaborative efforts toward health improvement; (b) generating spin-off projects; and (c) achieving systemic transformations.ConclusionThese results add to other studies on improving the science of CBPR in partnerships with a high level of power-sharing and co-governance. Our results suggest sustaining CBPR and achieving unanticipated benefits likely depend on trust-related mechanisms and a continuing commitment to power-sharing. These findings have implications for building successful CBPR partnerships to address challenging public health problems and the complex assessment of outcomes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1949-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Fulfilling Community Health Assessment Requirements: Lessons Learned From Facilitating State-Wide Community Health Forums

“…The experiences shared by the forum participants support previous reports highlighting the usefulness and challenges surrounding community partnerships and engagement (Alcantara, Harper, & Keys, 2015;Jagosh et al, 2015). Participants appreciated the opportunity to connect with other local health and human service organizations, but they had a concern that they were unaware of what other organizations were providing to community members and their target audiences.…”

Twelve Lessons Learned for Effective Research Partnerships Between Patients, Caregivers, Clinicians, Academic Researchers, and Other Stakeholders

“…Available frameworks suggest structures for partnerships, [13][14][15][16] and literature promotes broad principles such as addressing issues of power and equity [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] and developing relationships of trust. [20][21][22][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] However, it can be difficult for teams, particularly those new to this type of work, to operationalize abstract structures and principles in the specific context of their research project.In this article, we draw from our collective years of experience as patients, caregivers, clinicians, other stakeholders and academic researchers in partnered projects to offer 12 practical lessons we have learned about how to better conduct partnered research. These lessons are intended for all people working in such projects, including patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and others.…”

The journey and destination need to be intentional: Perceptions of success in community-academic research partnerships

“…Although partnership processes such as relationshipbuilding, trust, communication, decision-making, capacitybuilding and knowledge generation are considered key components of participatory research models (Roman Isler & Corbie-Smith 2012;, researchers are still identifying how partnership processes impact long-term population-level outcomes or other unintended outcomes (Jagosh et al 2015;Lucero et al 2016;Roman Isler & Corbie-Smith 2012). Some researchers have referred to these processes as 'intermediate outcomes' because they are critical influencers of long-term outcomes (Jagosh et al 2015;Roman Isler & Corbie-Smith 2012;Schulz, Israel & Lantz 2003), whereas others have referred to them as 'secondary outcomes' (Malone et al 2013).…”