Community Engagement
Traditional academic research projects that are described as “community-based” may involve the community as an advisor, or broker, for recruiting subjects without partnering with the community on its own terms to jointly lead the study. Such community-based projects tend to be time-limited. While developing knowledge most academic research projects usually do not build a lasting community legacy to continue with the work of solving wider problems, or to implement the lessons of the research. Because the community is not engaged in the work the benefits can be short-lived.
Authentic partnership with the community follows a different path and may have a different outcome. With a fully engaged community-academic partnership the center of control shifts toward the community. Every aspect of the project is designed to respect, honor, and include community stakeholders as full partners. The goal of the partnership is to solve not only the problem at hand, but to enable the community and the community-academic partnership to solve a wide range of issues.
We refer to research that is conducted in the Community Engagement model as Community-Partnered Participatory Research, or CPPR.