National Public Health Week Blog: Community-based Participatory Action Research
The American Public Health Association has designated two themes to highlight this year for National Public Health Week: Civic Engagement and Healthy Neighborhoods. The two themes highlight the important role of communities in public health. One research approach aims to address persistent public health problems by incorporating the unique assets of a community into research design. Community-based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) is slowly but surely establishing itself as a pillar in the public health research landscape.
What is Community-based Participatory Action Research?
CBPAR is a teamwork approach to studying health and the environment. It involves communities and public health experts working together to tackle public health issues. The main ideas behind this approach are that communities understand themselves well and have unique qualities, they possess valuable resources that can help with research, and they should be treated as equal partners in the research process.
In traditional research, scientists usually find a problem and come up with a plan to solve it. But in CBPAR, the community and researchers identify the problem together. They then work and learn side by side to solve it fairly. CBPAR aims to understand more about the people being studied because things like income level, race, gender, citizenship, and community background are increasingly linked to health.
Community-engaged Research Continuum
The Importance of Community-led Research
The United States is made up of people from diverse backgrounds. For everyone to have the best health, it’s important that they’re involved in research both as researchers and participants. CBPAR helps make research more diverse and fair by including and valuing people from communities that haven’t been represented much before. It tries to balance the power in research that has been historically unfair to these communities and encourages everyone to learn together.
In CBPAR, communities own the research data, are considered as important as the researchers, and have a say in sharing the results of the research. It is the combination of that data and narrative stories that has the power to influence local and national policies that affect these communities, making their voice vital.
Funding for CBPAR
A primary barrier to CBPAR is the lack of funding. After recent budget cuts to NIH, AHRQ, and NSF, among others, this research will likely continue struggling to receive funding. Last year, the NIH launched its first community-led research program, ComPASS. ComPASS aims to research structural barriers to achieving health equity through funding community organizations. AHRQ has numerous grants that support CBPARwork. Private institutions, like private universities, are another avenue for CBPAR funding. Community Engagement Cores, like CECR at Columbia University’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translation Research, foster community-based research through pilot grants. In addition to funding research projects themselves, private institutions also foster community engagement through grant writing classes and educational seminars.
CBPAR is an approach to research that places communities at the center. The equitable partnerships developed through CBPAR provide a unique advantage for public health research. To research health problems affecting a community, CBPAR demonstrates that communities need a seat at the table when making decisions about them.
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