Abstract

The Dickenson County Women's Health Project was developed to research the information needs and wants of women in Virginia's Appalachian region. Using a community-university partnership, local women, female academics and community researchers drew from each others strengths in a process of communication grounded in philosophies of community empowerment, competency-building and reciprocity in research. This article outlines the steps involved in developing the community-university partnership, discusses the project's methodology and shows the importance of differing perspectives in understanding women's health. The project results show that local women's opinions of health and health problems in Dickenson County differ substantially from those of health service providers and community leaders. The study concludes that these differences must be addressed to ensure the development of appropriate programs and that researchers must undertake self-examination of assumptions and potential biases when working in a community-university partnership. The article concludes that health research and program development at the community level must be conducted with and by local women — not just for them.

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