ABSTRACT
Community engagement (CE) has come to the forefront of academic health centers' (AHCs) work because of two recent trends: the shift from a more traditional 'treatment of disease' model of health care to a population health paradigm (Gourevitch, 2014), and increased calls from funding agencies to include CE in research activities (Bartlett, Barnes, & McIver, 2014). As defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, community engagement is "the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1997, p. 9). AHCs are increasingly called on to communicate details of their CE efforts to key stakeholders and to demonstrate their effectiveness. The population health paradigm values preventive care and widens the traditional purview of medicine to include social determinants of patients' health (Gourevitch, 2014). Thus, it has become increasingly important to join with communities in population health improvement efforts that address behavioral, social, and environmental determinants of health (Michener, et al., 2012; Aguilar-Gaxiola, et al., 2014; Blumenthal & Mayer, 1996). This CE can occur within multiple contexts in AHCs (Ahmed & Palermo, 2010; Kastor, 2011) including in education, clinical activities, research, health policy, and community service.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: This research effort includes a large scale study of 109 community-academic partnership projects funded by the Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program (HWPP), a component of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The study provides an analysis unlike other studies, which have been smaller, and/or more narrowly focused in the type of community-academic partnership projects analyzed. OBJECTIVES: To extract themes and insights for the benefit of future community-academic partnerships and the field of community-engaged research (CEnR). METHODS: Content analysis of the final reports submitted by 109 community-academic partnership projects awards within the time frame of March 2005 to August 2011. RESULTS: Thirteen themes emerged from the report analysis: community involvement, health accomplishments, capacity building, sustainability, collaboration, communication, best practices, administration, relationship building, clarity, adjustment of plan, strategic planning, and time. Data supported previous studies in the importance of some themes, and provided insights regarding how these themes are impactful. CONCLUSION: The case analysis revealed new insights into the characteristics of these themes, which the authors then grouped into three categories: foundational attributes of successful community-academic partnership, potential challenges of community-academic partnerships, and outcomes of community-academic partnerships. The insights gained from these reports further supports previous research extolling the benefits of community-academic partnerships and provides valuable direction for future partners, funders and evaluators in how to deal with challenges and what they can anticipate and plan for in developing and managing community-academic partnership projects.