The Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Guidebook was developed by Natasha Ray, MS, Director of New Haven Healthy Start and Chair of the OHER Steering Committee, and Karen Wang, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor of Medicine, as a resource to community members and academic researchers.
Since 2008, Ms. Ray and researchers from the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program (YRWJFCSP) have partnered on a series of research projects to address maternal health issues in New Haven, CT. During these partnerships, Ms. Ray and community research faculty from the YRWJFCSP reflected on what they experienced as best practices in community-academic partnered research. An opportunity arose between these two long standing research partners to gain a greater understanding of and enhance the experiences of other community leaders and university researchers in collaborative relationships. In 2012 Natasha Ray, and then Clinical Scholar, Karen Wang, MD launched a qualitative study to gain insights from both community leaders in New Haven and university researchers on practices that would benefit both partners. This Guidebook was created as a result of their work together and the findings of their interviews with 20+ community leaders and university researchers.
It is intended to help communities and community organizations in their decisions to:
1. Conduct their own research;
2. Work effectively with university researchers;
3. Maximize the value of community-university research relationships