Our Approach:

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach to conducting research by equitably partnering researchers and those directly affected by and knowledgeable of local circumstances. To inform research design, implementation and dissemination, this approach challenges academic and community partners to invest in team building, share resources, and mutually exchange ideas and expertise. The goal is that community partners ultimately lead or guide all aspects of the work.

Specifically, CBPR creates community-driven partnerships that build trusted relationships “from the community up” to:

  • Redress history of scientific racism
  • Generate community-owned data through rigorous research methods
  • Take action steps
  • Inform policy decisions and practices

Our Implementation Strategy:

  1. Identify community leaders to be part of the project
  2. Establish Community Organizer/ Project Director
  3. Establish a community advisory board (CAB)
  4. Establish and leverage community partnerships with non-profits, health and human services-related organizations, human rights organizations, education-based organizations, etc.
  5. Collaborate with CAB/community partners in conducting research/needs assessment
  6. Implement CAB-directed action steps influenced by findings

Our Principles:

  • Raise consciousness about inequalities, injustices, discrimination, structural racism
    and about privilege and the maintenance of advantage
  • Make a commitment to work differently, to share power and resources, to lead by being led, to change policies and practices centered on equity and justice.
  • Understand implicit bias and our vulnerability to unconscious biases and blind spots
  • Build trusted partnerships with cultural brokers, guides, diverse partners
  • Create gracious space
  • Practice cultural humility and radical reflexivity to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other)
  • Take action guided by the most marginalized
  • Do no harm

Our Projects:

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