The community voices program to facilitate community-academic researcher partnerships: Stakeholder perspectives on the program's usefulness.

Introduction: The Institute of Translational Health Sciences (Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program hub) developed a program coined Community Voices to invite communities to submit project ideas and be matched with academic researchers. We describe formative research to understand community and academic researcher perspectives on how the program could facilitate collaborations addressing community priorities. Methods: We conducted four focus groups with 31 community-based organization (CBO) representatives and 11 semi-structured interviews with academic researchers in the Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho regions. Questions included the appeal of Community Voices to engage community and academic partners, potential program usefulness, and Community Voices' potential role in building community-academic partnerships. We used an inductive, constant comparison approach to code transcripts and thematic analysis to generate themes. Results: Most CBO representatives were female (87.1%) and Hispanic/Latino (61.3%). Most academic researchers had a PhD (63.6%) and worked at a university (81.8%). The themes were: (1) community-academic partnerships built on trust will offer mutual benefit, (2) community-initiated project ideas should prioritize community needs, (3) matchmaking will accelerate connections but should not replace time to foster partnership, (4) Community Voices should go beyond matchmaking and provide ongoing support/training, and (5) fostering effective communication is key to partnership success. Conclusions: Community Voices is a novel, bidirectional community engagement program model that advances current practices of prioritizing researchers' project ideas. This community-driven program may shift the future direction of community engagement practices where prioritizing community's ideas becomes the norm of community-academic partnerships in clinical and translational science.

Factors impacting implementation of nutrition and physical activity policies in rural schools.

BACKGROUND: Rural Latino children have higher rates of obesity compared to non-Latino Whites. Schools are in a unique position to address rural childhood obesity through policies. While evidence exists on factors that promote or impede school-based physical activity (PA) and nutrition policies, only a fraction has been in rural communities. This study seeks to understand 1) the knowledge and perceptions of school nutrition and PA policies and 2) barriers and facilitators to their implementation among rural school stakeholders from Washington State. METHODS: We conducted 20 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with school stakeholders (e.g., principals and school nutrition directors) from four K-12 school districts in the Lower Yakima Valley of Eastern Washington State. Thematic analysis was conducted using inductive, constant comparison approach to identify themes around knowledge and perceptions of policies and barriers and facilitators of policy implementation. RESULTS: Three main themes were identified: perceptions and knowledge of school PA and nutrition policies, barriers to policy implementation, and facilitators of policy implementation. The majority of stakeholders were supportive of school-based policies promoting PA and a healthy diet, even when lacking a specific understanding of these policies. Four subthemes were identified as barriers to policy implementation: viewing PA as a low priority, misuse of recess time, funding constraints, and lack of strong leadership. Facilitators of implementation included strong leadership at the district level, creating healthy norms through school-community linkages and pooling community resources to improve nutrition and PA among children. CONCLUSIONS: Schools provide a unique setting to promote healthy diet and PA behaviors among children and their families. Study findings show that while knowledge of specific nutrition and PA policies may vary, support for such policies were high among rural stakeholders. Study findings can inform policy development and support strategies for policy implementation in rural settings. Future studies may want to examine whether implementation of strategies addressing the barriers and enhancing facilitators lead to success in rural school settings.

"We understand our community": implementation of the Healthy Eating Healthy Aging program among community-based organizations.

Cardiovascular disease is the second leading cause of death in the USA among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) over the age of 65. Healthy Eating Healthy Aging (HEHA), an evidence-based heart health program, can provide culturally appropriate nutrition education to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease. Community-based organizations (CBOs) are optimal settings to implement community-based programs. However, there is inadequate research on how evidence-based interventions like HEHA are implemented in CBOs. This study examined processes that facilitated the implementation of HEHA among CBOs serving older AAPIs. Twelve representatives from CBOs that implemented the HEHA program were recruited to participate in a semistructured interview. All the participants were CBO directors or senior managers. A semistructured interview guide was created and informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to capture how HEHA played into the five domains of CFIR: (a) intervention characteristics, (b) outer setting, (c) inner setting, (d) characteristics of the individuals, and (e) process. Data analysis captured themes under the CFIR domains. All five CFIR domains emerged from the interviews. Under intervention characteristics, three constructs emerged as facilitating the implementation of HEHA: (a) the participant's beliefs around the quality of the HEHA program and its ability to promote healthy eating, (b) HEHA's adaptability to different AAPI subgroups, and (c) perceptions of how successfully HEHA was bundled and assembled. Under outer setting, the participants described the community's need for healthy eating programs and how the HEHA program meets that need. Four constructs emerged under inner setting: (a) the CBO's structural characteristics and social standing in the community; (b) resources dedicated to the implementation and ongoing operations, including funding, training, education, physical space, and time; (c) the culture of the CBO; and (d) the participant's commitment and involvement in marketing, promotion, and implementation of HEHA. Under characteristics of individuals, participants' described their desire to learn the content of HEHA and deliver them successfully. Under process, participants described strategies to engage relevant individuals to facilitate HEHA implementation. The interviews with CBO representatives provided insights into CFIR domain constructs that facilitated the implementation of HEHA. CBOs are key settings for community health education. Understanding processes that lead to the successful implementation of evidence-based interventions among CBOs is critical for accelerating the dissemination and implementation of best practices.