8th Annual International Conference on Urban Health
Nairobi, Kenya
Kenyatta International Conference Center
Applying Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to Effectively Improve the Health of Community Populations

Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:00am-12:30pm
Friday, October 23, 2009 1:30-3:30pm

Organizer, Moderator, &Sponsor: Dana M. Sampson, National Institutes of Health/Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research

Title: - Improving Health in Communities with Communities (Health Providers, Oct. 22)
- Creating Academic-Community Partnerships to Advance Health: How and Why? (Academics, Oct. 23)

Purpose: The two workshops, separately targeting health providers and academics, are intended for scientists, researchers, and others interested in community-partnered research. It will offer instruction on community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches and demonstrate efficacy in advancing health.

Description: The 8th Annual International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH), “Meeting Urban Health Needs through Innovative Research, Policies and Interventions”, provides a forum for knowledge exchange amongst urban health stakeholders focused on interventions that help alleviate barriers to urban health care and to promote strategies and policies that enhance health of urban populations. Such efforts can aid in shaping progress on urban health issues worldwide.

Community-based participatory research is an orientation to research that requires a collaborative approach and focuses on relationships between research institutions and community partners with principles of co-learning, mutual benefit, and long-term commitment and incorporates community theories, participation, and practices into the research efforts. It is an applied approach that enables community residents/stakeholders to more actively participate in the full spectrum of research with goals of influencing change in systems, programs or policies to improve community health.

CBPR approaches have demonstrated strength in intervention development and implementation in urban and rural areas. These culturally appropriate, locally relevant approaches can yield more precise, innovative and impactful interventions to advance the health of community populations. These workshops target academics and health providers to promote the value and strategies for effectively conducting community-partnered research which offers the potential to not only produce more effective interventions, but also generate better-informed hypotheses and enhance the translation of research results into practice.

Facilitated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the workshops present research community thought on CBPR and successful research projects from sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Participants will leave with an understanding of CBPR – its principles, advantages, and usefulness – through an examination of CBPR health promotion, disease prevention, and intervention research studies.

Presenters from the United States and South Africa will discuss their respective experiences and knowledge of CBPR approaches and community engagement efforts. Specifically, workshops will feature an NIH CBPR program official, an NIH principal investigator on a project including CBPR in Africa, a principal investigator on a British CBPR project involving African migrants, and a South African academic-community partnership. Topics to be covered include the following: