Research
The research goal for the UNMC Center for Reducing Health Disparities is to become a nationally recognized Center of Excellence serving Nebraska by establishing and strengthening the research and program portfolios across the center, college, campus and community to reduce health disparities and achieve health equity.
In pursuit of this goal, the center's research branch convenes academic-community teams to work on health equity issues, assists faculty to perform research related to health disparities, responds to appropriate funding mechanisms, and builds capacity within the center, college, campus and community to perform health disparity research.
The research branch is available to provide a number of services to facilitate health disparities/health equity research including:
- Literature reviews.
- Health disparity data requests.
- Consultation on study design of projects targeting underserved communities.
- Spanish translation services for IRB approved research related documents.
- Promotion and enrollment into research studies.
Community-Based Participatory Research
Community-based participatory research is a collaborative orientation to research which serves as an applied approach with a goal of influencing change in community health, systems, programs or policies.
- Community participation in every phase of the research process.
- Building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between academia and community.
- Decision-making should be done by those most affected by the outcomes of the decision.
- Development of structures and processes by which groups can meet their own needs.
- Empowerment of community members over their own lives.
- Knowledge is not a product of academia, but a result of engagement.
- Development of knowledge should be linked to action, change or advocacy.
- Recognizes community as a unit of identity.
- Builds on strengths and resources within the community.
- Facilitates collaborative partnerships in all phases of the research.
- Integrates knowledge and action for mutual benefit of all partners.
- Promotes a co-learning and empowering process that attends to social inequalities.
- Involves a cyclical and iterative process.
- Addresses health from both positive and ecological perspectives.
- Facilitates sustainable programs for greater community benefit.
- Disseminates findings and knowledge gained to all partners.
Community members are community builders, developing organizations and services within their own communities. In addition, they serve as mediators between professional and lay networks building and maintaining relationships between organizations and communities of interest.
- Joins partners with diverse expertise to address complex public health problems.
- Improves intervention design and implementation by facilitating participant recruitment and retention.
- Has the potential to translate research findings to guide the development of further interventions and policy change.
- Benefits the community and researchers alike through the knowledge gained and actions taken.
- Increases trust and bridges cultural gaps between partners.
- Provides resources for the communities involved.
- Increases the quality and validity of research.
- Enhances the relevance and use of data.
- National Institutes of Health. Community-Based Participatory Research at the National Institutes of Health.
- Ritas, Cassandra. Speaking Truth, Creating Power: A Guide to Policy Work for Community-Based Participatory Research Practitioners. July 2003.
- Onyx, Jenny. University-Community Engagement: What Does It Mean? Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 1 (2008): 90-106.