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Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership

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 lea...

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Autores principales: Sprague Martinez, Linda, Reisner, Ellin, Campbell, Maria, Brugge, Doug
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5334703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28165418
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020149
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author Sprague Martinez, Linda
Reisner, Ellin
Campbell, Maria
Brugge, Doug
author_facet Sprague Martinez, Linda
Reisner, Ellin
Campbell, Maria
Brugge, Doug
author_sort Sprague Martinez, Linda
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-53347032017-03-16 Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership Sprague Martinez, Linda Reisner, Ellin Campbell, Maria Brugge, Doug Int J Environ Res Public Health Article 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. MDPI 2017-02-04 2017-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5334703/ /pubmed/28165418 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020149 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Sprague Martinez, Linda
Reisner, Ellin
Campbell, Maria
Brugge, Doug
Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title_full Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title_fullStr Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title_full_unstemmed Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title_short Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership
title_sort participatory democracy, community organizing and the community assessment of freeway exposure and health (cafeh) partnership
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5334703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28165418
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020149
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