Old Wine in New Bottles? The Positioning of Participation in 17 NIH-Funded CBPR Projects

Abstract

Influenced by Cooke and Kothari's (2001) suggestion that participation “remains a way of talking about rather than doing things” (p. 32), we question to what extent this is true in the public health funding process. Thus, the aim of this article was to investigate the ways in which recent National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects discursively positioned CBPR in their grant applications. We collected 17 NIH-funded CBPR proposals, analyzed them using a grounded theory approach, and subjected the findings to critical analysis focusing on the definition of community, the type of community “participation” promoted, and the nature of the research proposed. We conclude that certain types of CBPR projects are privileged in the funding review process and discuss the implications of these findings for future CBPR praxis.