Abstract
Background: Conflicting interests, power imbalance and relationships characterized by distrust are just a few of the many challenges community–academic research partnerships face. In addition, the time it takes to build relationships is often overlooked, which further complicates matters and can leave well-intentioned individuals re-creating oppressive conditions through inauthentic partnerships. This paper presents a novel approach of using meeting minutes to explore partnership dynamics. The Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) partnership is used as an illustrative case study to identify how community academic partnerships overcome the challenges associated with community-based participatory research (CBPR). CAFEH is a study of ultrafine particle exposure (UFP) near highways in the Boston, MA area. Methods: Qualitative analysis was applied to meeting minutes and process evaluation reports from the first three years of the CAFEH study (n = 73 files). In addition, a group meeting was held with project partners in order to contextualize the findings from the document analysis. Results: The three most commonly referenced challenges included language barriers, the overall project structure and budgetary constraints. Meanwhile, a heavy emphasis on process and an approach steeped in participatory democracy facilitated CAFEH’s ability to overcome these challenges, as well as sustain and augment strong partnership ties. Conclusions: This experience suggests that leadership that incorporates an organizing approach and a transformational style facilitates CBPR processes and helps teams surmount challenges.
Highlights
In memory of Cheri Lieberman, Ph.D. who evaluated and informed our partnership processes.Improving environmental health and community wellbeing requires the coordination of multiple stakeholders working in concert to address complex problems
This paper explores the early stages of the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) partnership, in an attempt to identify factors that have led to their sustainability over the years, and how they have been able to overcome the many challenges they faced early on
In order to better understand partnership processes associated with CAFEH and to identify strategies employed to overcome community-based participatory research (CBPR) related challenges, we examined documents from the first three years of the partnership, 2008–2011
Summary
We examined the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) as a case study. CAFEH is a community academic research partnership that studies health effects of and remedies to exposure to ultrafine particle exposure (UFP) pollution near highways. Partnership is used as an illustrative case study to identify how community academic partnerships overcome the challenges associated with community-based participatory research (CBPR). The time associated with CBPR poses a challenge, causing some researchers to shy away from partnership approaches [12]. Mutual trust is a key tenet of CBPR, building trust relationships is more said than done This is true given that the divide between academic institutions and the communities within which they sit is real [12]. Factors that may serve as a point of contention for community members may include: a history of students and faculty dropping in, collecting information and leaving a history of redevelopment viewed unfavorably by the community; and the inequitable distribution of resources whereby the university is infrastructure-rich at the expense of the communities [14,15,16,17,18]
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