Session: A CBPR Approach to Bridging the Gap between Rigor and Relevance in Community Mental Health Research (Research that Promotes Sustainability and (re)Builds Strengths (January 15 - 18, 2009))

There has been increased pressure for academics and community agencies to work together to establish genuine research partnerships that would increase the relevance of research and evidence based interventions to the mental health of community populations. This symposium describes the issues involved in the development and implementation of one such collaboration. The University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry have been engaged in a five year NIMH sponsored collaboration with Family Services of Western Pennsylvania, a progressive mental health/social services agency serving 7,000 people in the Pittsburgh area. Our mutual interest in decreasing barriers to care and finding ways to improve treatment engagement made us logical partners for an IP-RISP proposal to develop an agency infrastructure designed to conduct research that would improve mental health treatment access for low income populations while studying the processes of academic/community partnerships. Over time, this research/administrative umbrella conducted a number of pilot projects examining client perceptions of need and services, and systemic factors contributing to barriers to care. It also generated a number of additional pilot research projects as needs and concerns were identified by agency administrators or supervisors. This symposium will describe how this collaboration has evolved over time, the resultant projects that have been supported, and the influence of embedded research on agency clinical programs. We will provide an overview of the research infrastructure that was created, and describe the processes and outcomes of the project from the viewpoint of the academically oriented services researchers at the University (Anderson), and from the agency's service perspective (Goughler). While both the university and the agency were strongly committed to this research agenda, managing the two separate agendas of the two collaborators with different priorities and values systems produced several challenges. The researchers, who became embedded in the agency, needed to adapt their methods and measurements to be relevant to community services, and work to translate interventions to be relevant to low income clients and community clinicians. The agency had to commit resources to creating a more data oriented culture which produced time burdens for agency supervisors and clinicians. The time involved in conducting this type of research was often a frustration for both sides: The agency had to wait for data which delayed their usual quick decision making to address real world needs; the researchers had to respect the need for joint decision making which delayed research processes and publication. Overcoming these challenges required flexibility in the joint agenda and continuous cross system communication. A summary of factors that are important for generating and maintaining collaborative efforts across systems that have differing priorities will be discussed, as will the difficulties in translating academic research to be relevant in community settings.