Session: Community-Based Participatory Research in Social Work: Processes and Outcomes (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

The rapid increase in popularity of community-based participatory research (CBPR) highlights its tangible benefits as well as its challenges (Israel et al., 2005; Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003). With values focused on respecting and partnering with communities, social work—and especially social work research—is a natural venue for CBPR. Yet the expansion of CBPR has been more noteworthy in public health, community psychology and environmental studies than in social work. This proposed symposium has two primary goals: 1) to showcase CBPR in social work research by presenting four exemplar projects that offer findings on both CBPR processes and outcomes; and, 2) to set the stage for a panel and audience discussion of the challenges of establishing and maintaining partnerships while conducting rigorous research.

Each presentation offers a differing and complementary perspective. Community partners include formerly homeless adults with serious mental illness, a coalition of urban organizations serving children and families in an inner city neighborhood, HIV service providers, and underserved African-Americans at risk for cancer. The foci of the CBPR projects include addressing health problems due to homelessness and deprivation, improving children's lives and empowering the larger community, incorporating research into HIV health care, and reducing cancer disparities. The degree of community involvement varies along a continuum depending on the goals of each project and its duration, ranging from early phases of partnerships and research to an advanced NIH-funded project that is multi-year, multi-level, and multi-state.

The first presentation will focus on conducting CBPR with an extremely disenfranchised group of formerly homeless adults with serious mental illness who are newly housed in a Philadelphia program. The authors report preliminary findings related to collaboration in addressing health problems amidst other problems. The second presentation provides an overview of a multi-partner initiative in Pittsburgh patterned after the Harlem Children's Zone. The third presentation reports on NIMH-funded research with a broad coalition of New York State community-based HIV providers and describes findings from research on readiness to collaborate. The last presentation reports on an NIH-funded social work-led cancer disparities research initiative originating on Chicago's South Side and extending to include rural areas of Missouri.

Taken together, these projects offer mixed method research findings on outcomes as well as insights into the processes that characterize high-quality CBPR. To facilitate a robust panel discussion with the audience, the organizer and discussant (a senior researcher with experience in mixed methods and community research) will prepare a list of key questions and recommendations emerging from the presentations. Emphasis will be on the maximizing the impact of CBPR in improving policies and practice. By doing so, we hope to advance greater understanding and future use of CBPR in social work research.