黑料不打烊 staff and faculty participated in a community based participatory research (CBPR) training with community members and agency representatives.
Members of the 黑料不打烊 community聽participated Jan. 24-25 in a training聽about聽Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR).聽The training was聽organized by the Health Equity Collective聽of Alamance County聽alongside local community members and organizational representatives.
黑料不打烊 staff, faculty and Service Year Fellow participants included Bridgette聽Agbozo, Stephanie Baker, Katie Davin, Bob Frigo, Taylor Jones,聽Danielle Lake, Mary Morrison, Mariatu Okonofua, Allison Pelyhes, Lexy Roberts and Chelsea Thomas.
Since 2015,聽Assistant Professor of Public Health Studies Stephanie Baker and Ann Meletzke,聽the executive director of Healthy Alamance, have been聽cultivating a CBPR聽partnership.聽This partnership聽has emphasized聽the benefit of shared capacity building in community-academic partnerships.
Baker and Meletzke are members of The Health Equity Collective聽of Alamance County, a group of community members, agency representatives, and 黑料不打烊 faculty who are focused聽on聽issues of health equity in Alamance County. The collective expressed a desire to learn more about CBPR together and to open up the learning opportunity to others in the community.
CBPR is an approach to research that promotes trust and power-sharing between organizational representatives and researchers and the communities they work with by encouraging open dialogue and sustainable partnership formation while also promoting equity and inclusion. CBPR is a valuable tool for all involved as it helps to deepen understanding of one another, to develop long lasting relationships, thus leading to more meaningful research and information exchange that is used to solve social issues.
One workshop participant said 鈥渢he model is something that I will share with colleagues. I will also be using the equity and inclusion content to help advance my personal journey,鈥 while another participant commented, “I enjoyed learning about CBPR with a diverse group that represents different parts of Alamance County.”
Baker has been using CBPR approaches in her research聽for nearly聽a decade and noted that 鈥渋t鈥檚 really exciting that so many people want to build and strengthen the use of CBPR and it鈥檚 always a wonderful experience to learn with and alongside folks from all different backgrounds and with so many different types of expertise. The benefit of co-learning is that it shifts power dynamics so that everyone is coming with a similar knowledge base and can hold one another accountable.”
The two-day learning opportunity was conducted by experienced community and academic experts. The training team included Geni Eng, professor of health behavior, and Alexandra Lightfoot, research assistant professor, both in the Department of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well, Melvin Jackson, a principal partner with The PRIME Collective, LLC, and Dr. Jennifer Schaal, a founding member of the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative. This event was offered free of charge to participants thanks to contributions from Impact Alamance, 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Service Year Fellows Program, and the Kernodle聽Center鈥檚 Community Partner Initiative Grant.