Common pathways toward informing policy and environmental strategies to promote health: a study of CDC's Prevention Research Centers.

This study examined the roles academic researchers can play to inform policy and environmental strategies that promote health and prevent disease. Prevention Research Centers (PRCs) engage in academic-community partnerships to conduct applied public health research. Interviews were used to collect data on the roles played by 32 PRCs to inform policy and environmental strategies that were implemented between September 2009 and September 2010. Descriptive statistics were calculated in SAS 9.2. A difference in roles played was observed depending on whether strategies were policy or environmental. Of the policy initiatives, the most common roles were education, research, and partnership. In contrast, the most prevalent roles the PRCs played in environmental approaches were research and providing health promotion resources. Academic research centers play various roles to help inform policy and environmental strategies.

Academic-health department collaborative relationships are reciprocal and strengthen public health practice: results from a study of academic research centers.

BACKGROUND: Collaborations between academic institutions and state and local health departments have been shown to enhance the public health core functions of Assurance by improving the public health workforce's knowledge and skills. Few studies have analyzed how academic-health department collaborations enhance Assessment and Policy Development core functions. This qualitative study explores types of collaborations between health departments and Prevention Research Centers (PRCs) and how they align with the core functions. Prevention Research Centers are academic institutions funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct public health research and translate research results for policies and practices. METHODS: We reviewed each PRC's annual report from fiscal year 2011 and abstracted descriptions of PRC-health department collaborations. We identified 14 themes of PRC-health department collaborations and conducted a qualitative analysis to describe the dimensions and distribution of themes. RESULTS: Of the 37 PRCs, 36 reported 215 collaborations with 19 city, 97 county, 31 state, and 46 tribal health departments. Themes of research, survey, and surveillance aligned with the Assessment core function and evaluation, strategic planning, technical assistance, and program implementation supported the Policy Development and Assurance core functions. Overall, health departments provided on-the-ground expertise to inform PRC research, ensuring its applicability to public health practice. Reciprocally, PRCs improved data quality, increased the scientific rigor of health department processes and programs, and filled knowledge gaps within health departments. Both PRCs and health departments enhanced the relevance of public health programs and practices by grounding implementation and evaluation in community needs and views. CONCLUSION: Findings from this study demonstrate that PRC-health department collaborations often enhanced multiple core functions that could lead to implementation of evidence-based interventions and continuous quality improvement of public health administration at the local, state, and tribal levels. This study highlights the value and importance of reciprocal academic-health department partnerships.

Making sense of HIV testing: social representations in young Africans' HIV-related narratives from six countries.

HIV testing and counselling are a critical intervention to support treatment access and prevent new infections. Despite high rates of infection, few young Africans know their HIV status. With the aim of informing initiatives that encourage HIV testing and access to testing benefits, this study seeks to understand how young Africans make sense of HIV testing. We conducted thematic narrative-based analysis of a stratified random sample (n = 586, ≈ 5%) from 11,354 narratives written in 2005 by males and females aged 10-24 from six sub-Saharan African countries for the 'Scenarios from Africa' scriptwriting contest which invites young people to contribute ideas for short films about HIV. The factors represented by the young authors as influencing testing behaviour and outcomes are complex and interactive, indicating that interventions that are not contextually appropriate are unlikely to affect a shift towards increased testing or improved post-testing outcomes. The narratives point to opportunities to increase HIV testing in this demographic.