Ties That Bind: Creating and sustaining community-academic partnerships

Abstract

Growing interest among academics and health professionals in finding new ways to study and address complex health and social problems has manifested in recent years with increasing community demands for research and program implementation that is community-based, rather than merely community placed. In the United States, community-based participatory research (CBPR), with its emphasis on the creation and use of community-university or community-academic partnerships, is the prevailing paradigm to address these complex problems, especially those concerning racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. While the need to strengthen the relationship between researchers and the community has been recognised, often from the viewpoint of the university partner, discussions on sustainability of partnerships have been few. The aim of this paper is to share reflections, through the eyes of the community members, on the core elements that tie community and academic members together and the challenges in understanding and nurturing those ties so that the community-academic partnership is sustained over time, and to offer possible recommendations for sustainability. This article speaks from the community’s perspective and reflects on the vital elements/components that tie together community-university partnerships and the challenges that may occur when trying to sustain and grow the partnership. It is based on a research CBPR study that was conducted to (1) evaluate the functioning and future sustainability of the community-university partnership of the Community Child Health Network Study Los Angeles (CCHN-LA) community-university partnership, and (2) evaluate the experience and beliefs of the current CCHN-LA community-university partnership members in their understanding of current functioning. 
 
 Keywords
 Community-academic partnerships; sustainability; challenges; solutions

Bringing the community into Higher Education

“…The discrepant power can be diffused by focusing on communal paybacks or reciprocity in the partnership. Such communal benefits will emerge if there is relevant research, focusing on the involvement of all partners in the creation of knowledge to solve relevant problems (Wright, Williams, Lieber, Carrasco and Gedjeyan 2011). However, there may be discrepancies in power balances between the two parties as noted by Petersen and Osman (2013:17) who refer to the "traditional hegemonic position and dominance of academic knowledge".…”

Building equitable community-academic research collaborations: Learning together through tensions and contradictions

“…Mutual trust is another pillar of community-based research (Carlton et al 2009;Israel et al 1998;Vazquez Jacobus, Baskett & Bechstein 2011;Wright et al 2011). A collaborative process, based on the principles of reciprocity and inclusivity, builds trust (Carlton et al 2009).…”

“…Mutual trust is also fostered through meaningful dialogue and deliberation among stakeholders. The centrality of dialogue in the collaborative process is an indication that community participation is a valued asset in the production of collaborative outcomes (Campbell & Lassiter 2010;Carlton et al 2009;Israel et al 1998;Wright et al 2011). …”

“…Many of these studies describe an evaluation of the collaborative process (e.g. Carlton Lantz et al 2001;Wright et al 2011). Like the studies cited above, our Evaluation Working Group used a number of research and evaluation strategies to generate the data, which this article explores.…”

The Quest for Ubuntu: Water and Health in Limpopo (WHIL) Partnership

“…There are valuable lessons to be learned from assessments of university-community collaborations, there are however fewer sources that evaluate these same tenets using the “north-south” university-to-university partnership as the unit of analysis (Vogel and Seifer 2011). This article pays particular attention to “north-south” university-community initiatives where historically indigenous people have been subjected to what has been labeled, “parachute research” or “annexed sites” (Swiss Commission for Research Partnership with Developing Countries 1998; Edejer 1999; Costello and Zumla 2000; Orori-Adjei and Gyapong 2000; Jentsch and Pilley 2003; Binka 2005; Volmink and Dare 2005; Tomilinson, Swartz et al 2006; Mayo, Tsey et al 2009; Wright, Williams et al 2011). …”