Bridging the Gap: Advancing EBP Development and Implementation through Academic-Community Partnerships

As social work scholars, we strive to conduct collaborative research that makes a meaningful difference in the real world. However, our own standards for what makes for rigorous intervention research can at times interfere with conducting research that does indeed make a real difference. The development and implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP) have gained increasing importance within social work academia. Yet, many community agencies and practitioners remain committed to models of practice that are familiar and developed from clinical expertise. EBPs may be viewed by practitioners as “cookie cutter” approaches with little practical utility in their specific contexts and dismissed outright. When EBPs are utilized, model fidelity is often compromised as interventions may be significantly altered to fit a population or added to a flexible toolbox of possible intervention techniques being used in community settings. Further, strict adherence to an EBP approach to intervention development often fails to value our community colleagues' practice wisdom. Authentic academic community based research collaborations grounded within a social justice framework must overcome common cultural and structural divides between community based organizations and academic institutions. Practitioner knowledge is imperative to identifying both relevant problems and solutions. Collaborative research endeavors are more likely to produce viable and effective practice and policy options to address social problems and contribute to greater equity and justice. In this roundtable, participants from four different institutions will discuss their efforts to produce research that informs and influences practice in a range of fields, highlighting challenges as well as successes. The first presenter will discuss her use of CBPR approaches as a means to positively influence practitioner behavior, service delivery systems, and policy relevant to trauma and violence. She uses long-standing community partner relationships, as well her experiences as a former practitioner to create opportunities for mutually beneficial collaborations that build scientific knowledge. The second presenter will share the process of working with long-term community partners to develop and evaluate effective interventions that address the negative impact of trauma on young children and families. She will discuss the tensions that occur among various collaborators in terms of the different methods that are valued to develop best practices. The third presenter will discuss her collaborations with youth mentoring programs to conduct in-depth longitudinal qualitative research on the mentoring process. Her studies have resulted in significant practice innovations, including greater attention to potentially problematic relationships and to closure in youth mentoring relationships, inclusion of parents and families in the mentoring process, and engaging youth in the selection of their own mentors. The final presenter will discuss her methods for examining sociocultural factors that influence the coping strategies of African American family members of homicide victims resulting in culturally responsive, community informed and community based interventions to support the management of grief and bereavement experienced by African American survivors of homicide victims. After these short presentations, we will engage attendees in a structured discussion focused on facilitating community-academic partnerships that help bridge the gap between research and practice.