ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Brownsville Action Community for Health Equality (BACHE) is a coalition-based, service system change pilot for African American and Puerto Rican women of Brownsville, a community within Brooklyn, New York, with disproportionately high rates of infant mortality. OBJECTIVES: Identify "lessons learned" from the implementation phase of a 5-year pilot project that employs a community-based participatory (CBPR) approach to reducing risk factors for infant mortality. METHODS: Nineteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with BACHE's partners throughout 2010. Sessions were audiotaped and transcribed. Data was incorporated into a framework based on grounded theory and interpreted by project partners. RESULTS: Lessons learned related to engaging partners, leveraging community resources, dealing with highly structured institutions, measuring progress, and promoting and sustaining system change. CONCLUSION: A service system change pilot like BACHE requires: social capital, capable partners, a strong coalition, flexibility of approach, internal champions, systems knowledge, awareness of policy, and strong community involvement.
Subject(s)
Black or African American/statistics & numerical data , Community-Based Participatory Research/organization & administration , Health Care Coalitions/organization & administration , Health Status Disparities , Hispanic or Latino/statistics & numerical data , Infant Mortality/ethnology , Perinatal Care/organization & administration , Adolescent , Adult , Female , Humans , Infant , Interviews as Topic , Male , Middle Aged , New York City/epidemiology , Perinatal Care/standards , Pilot Projects , Poverty Areas , Pregnancy , Program Evaluation , Young AdultABSTRACT
Partnering with communities is a critical aspect of contemporary health promotion. Linkages between universities and communities are particularly significant, given the prominence of academic institutions in channeling grants. This article describes the collaboration between a school of public health and several community-based organizations on a maternal and infant health grant project. The partnership serves as a model for ways in which a university and community organizations can interrelate and interact. Central lessons include the significance of sharing values and goals, the benefit of drawing on the different strengths of each partner, the gap created by the university's institutional focus on research rather than service and advocacy, and the strains created by power inequities and distribution of funds. A key element of the partnership's success is the emphasis on capacity building and colearning. The project demonstrates the potential of employing community-academic partnerships as a valuable mechanism for implementing community-based health promotion programs.
