Schedule:
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Juniper, Level 2 (Sheraton Grand Seattle)
* noted as presenting author
Background and Purpose
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is part of a broader movement that affirms the value of decolonizing and anti-racist epistemologies and methods that challenge the ways in which dominant health research paradigms can exclude or exploit marginalized communities and, instead, center community-identified needs, experiences, and forms of knowledge (Wallerstein & Duran, 2010; Walters et al., 2008).
Although growing calls to address antiracism in social work scholarship extoll the value of community-engaged research (Waller et al., 2022), structural barriers tied to advancement in the academy continue to limit CBPR-dominant studies, particularly among early career scholars of color who are increasingly adopting these approaches. Further, CBPR scholars of color who engage in research with their own or other under-resourced communities navigate complex ethical, social, and political considerations, often taking on additional invisible labor that requires more time to complete their research studies. Lastly, they must work to sustain relationships and forms of community accountability without institutional support or recognition for this labor as “research” (Lowry & Ford-Paz, 2013).
Using a duo-autoethnographic approach and guided by principles of Public Health Critical Race Praxis (Ford & Airhihenbuwa, 2010), this study aimed to investigate the experiences of two tenure-track scholars in social work at research-intensive universities who draw on CBPR and anti-racist approaches to their health equity-focused research with minoritized communities.
Method
Autoethnography is a methodology that combines autobiography and ethnography to critically examine personal experiences within a broader sociocultural context (Ellis et al., 2011), while duo-ethnography is a dialogic, multivocal approach that draws on narratives of two or more researchers in order to meaningfully understand social phenomenon from multiple perspectives (Lund et al., 2016; Norris, 2017). Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCR) served as the study’s theoretical framework, using PHCR principles to guide data collection and analysis.
Steps from Chang et al. (2013) guided data collection and analysis: (1) preliminary data collection, wherein each author independently wrote reflections; (2) collaborative in-depth dialogue, in which we shared self-reflexive ethnographies and engaged in free-flowing conversation to compare and contrast experiences; and (3) post-dialogue reflective writing, to analyze key themes.
Findings
Three primary themes emerged from the analysis. The first theme highlighted motivations for engaging in CBPR, corresponding to PHCR principles of centering marginalized voices and the social construction of knowledge. The second theme involved convergences and divergences of the positionalities between ourselves as researchers and the communities that have been the center of our CBPR-based studies, connected to PHCR principles of race consciousness and intersectionality. The third theme related to structural challenges faced in pursuing CBPR-based studies as tenure-track scholars of color tied to resource and temporal constraints, linked to PHCR principles of structural determinism and ordinariness of racism.
Conclusion and Implications
Although CBPR is hailed as a promising approach to address health inequities, in can pose challenges for early-career scholars because it is time- and resource-intensive. This study highlights experiences of tenure-track scholars of color engaged in CBPR in order to inform structural changes and facilitate greater institutional support for adopting CBPR.
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is part of a broader movement that affirms the value of decolonizing and anti-racist epistemologies and methods that challenge the ways in which dominant health research paradigms can exclude or exploit marginalized communities and, instead, center community-identified needs, experiences, and forms of knowledge (Wallerstein & Duran, 2010; Walters et al., 2008).
Although growing calls to address antiracism in social work scholarship extoll the value of community-engaged research (Waller et al., 2022), structural barriers tied to advancement in the academy continue to limit CBPR-dominant studies, particularly among early career scholars of color who are increasingly adopting these approaches. Further, CBPR scholars of color who engage in research with their own or other under-resourced communities navigate complex ethical, social, and political considerations, often taking on additional invisible labor that requires more time to complete their research studies. Lastly, they must work to sustain relationships and forms of community accountability without institutional support or recognition for this labor as “research” (Lowry & Ford-Paz, 2013).
Using a duo-autoethnographic approach and guided by principles of Public Health Critical Race Praxis (Ford & Airhihenbuwa, 2010), this study aimed to investigate the experiences of two tenure-track scholars in social work at research-intensive universities who draw on CBPR and anti-racist approaches to their health equity-focused research with minoritized communities.
Method
Autoethnography is a methodology that combines autobiography and ethnography to critically examine personal experiences within a broader sociocultural context (Ellis et al., 2011), while duo-ethnography is a dialogic, multivocal approach that draws on narratives of two or more researchers in order to meaningfully understand social phenomenon from multiple perspectives (Lund et al., 2016; Norris, 2017). Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCR) served as the study’s theoretical framework, using PHCR principles to guide data collection and analysis.
Steps from Chang et al. (2013) guided data collection and analysis: (1) preliminary data collection, wherein each author independently wrote reflections; (2) collaborative in-depth dialogue, in which we shared self-reflexive ethnographies and engaged in free-flowing conversation to compare and contrast experiences; and (3) post-dialogue reflective writing, to analyze key themes.
Findings
Three primary themes emerged from the analysis. The first theme highlighted motivations for engaging in CBPR, corresponding to PHCR principles of centering marginalized voices and the social construction of knowledge. The second theme involved convergences and divergences of the positionalities between ourselves as researchers and the communities that have been the center of our CBPR-based studies, connected to PHCR principles of race consciousness and intersectionality. The third theme related to structural challenges faced in pursuing CBPR-based studies as tenure-track scholars of color tied to resource and temporal constraints, linked to PHCR principles of structural determinism and ordinariness of racism.
Conclusion and Implications
Although CBPR is hailed as a promising approach to address health inequities, in can pose challenges for early-career scholars because it is time- and resource-intensive. This study highlights experiences of tenure-track scholars of color engaged in CBPR in order to inform structural changes and facilitate greater institutional support for adopting CBPR.