Extramural Research

Community Partnerships

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Community partnerships are an integral part of the Centers for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research. The Children's Centers emphasize community engagement and the academic research community has recognized the complex issues that affect children’s health, and have suggested greater community involvement in determining research priorities and interventions. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) incorporates partnerships between academic, health services, public health, and community-based organizations and most of the Centers employ CBPR principles. The Centers are developing innovative ways to investigate the role of environmental stressors in important childhood disorders such as asthma, autism and learning disabilities as well as finding effective strategies to reduce the risks from these exposures.

The Children’s Centers apply CBPR to understand and prevent children’s exposure to environmental hazards and health disparities. Each of the Centers includes a CBPR project, and most of the Centers have a Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC) which works in collaboration with the investigators, other Cores in each Center and a community advisory board to translate scientific findings into information for the public, policymakers and clinical professionals that can be used to protect children’s health.

For more information, the following publication describes the major benefits of using the CBPR approach, presents the experiences of six of the Children’s Centers, and provides lessons learned and recommendations or establishing and maintaining CBPR partnerships.

Israel BA, Parker EA, Rowe Z, Salvatore A, Minkler M, Lopez J, Butz A, Mosley A, Coates L, Lambert G, Potito PA, Brenner B, Rivera M, Romero H, Thompson B, Coronado G, Halstead S. Community-based participatory research: lessons learned from the Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research. Environ Health Perspect. 2005 Oct;113(10):1463-71.