The community engagement course and action network: strengthening community and academic research partnerships to advance health equity.

Background: Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions are uniquely positioned to implement community-campus research partnerships based on a history of service, the pursuit of community trustworthiness and student demographics often similar to surrounding marginalized communities. The Morehouse School of Medicine Prevention Research Center collaborates with members of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority Serving Institutes, and community organizations on the Community Engaged Course and Action Network. This network is the first of its kind and aims to strengthen members' ability to implement Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles and partnerships. Projects address public health priorities including mental health among communities of color, zoonotic disease prevention, and urban food deserts. Materials and methods: To assess the effectiveness of the network, a Participatory Evaluation framework was implemented to conduct process evaluation which included review of partnership structures, operations, project implementation processes, and preliminary outcomes of the research collaborations. A focus group of Community Engagement Course and Action Network members (community and academic) was also conducted to identify benefits and challenges of the network with emphasis on key areas for improvement to further enhance the relationships between partners and to facilitate their subsequent community-campus research. Results: Network improvements were tied to themes strengthening community-academic partnerships including sharing and fellowship, coalition building and collaboration, and greater connections and awareness of community needs through their current community-academic partnerships. The need to conduct ongoing evaluation during and after implementation, for determining the early adoption of CBPR approaches was also identified. Conclusion: Evaluation of the network's processes, infrastructure, and operation provides early lessons learned to strengthen the network. Ongoing assessment is also essential for ensuring continuous quality improvement across partnerships such as determining CBPR fidelity, assessing partnership synergy, and dynamics, and for quality improvement of research protocol. The implications and potential for advancing implementation science through this and similar networks are great towards advancing leadership in modeling how foundations in community service can advance to CBPR partnership formation and ultimately, health equity approaches, that are local defined and assessed.

Open-air schools and the tuberculous child in early 20th-century America.

In the dead of winter, 1908, the first open-air school in the United States commenced class in Providence, RI. Housed on the second floor of an old school building in a crowded section of the city, this new school--actually an ungraded class in which the enrollment never exceeded 25 pupils--had several novel features. Perhaps most striking was that the brick wall on the southern side of the room had been removed and replaced with a wall of windows, hinged at the top and capable of being raised against the ceiling by means of cords and pulleys. Except in driving snow or rain, these windows were kept wide open. To protect them against the cold, the children (age range, 6 to 13 years) who were chosen for this class because they were sickly, anemic, undernourished, or showing early signs of tuberculosis and because, owing to their ill health, they had failed to make adequate progress in advancing to the next grade, were outfitted in wool sweaters, mittens, caps, and felt overshoes and were encased in "Eskimo" or sitting-out bags that resembled present-day sleeping bags.