Translational Research Strategies for Mitigating Racialized Implementation Gaps and Accelerating Community Empowerment: Examples from Participatory Action Research Studies

Background and Purpose: This paper first outlines the problem of lack of “voltage” (List, 2022) in traditional approaches to research, resulting in part from researcher-participant relationships that are insufficiently respectful of strengths and cultures and that do not engage the reflective capacities of participants. Lack of voltage means academic research takes years to apply in communities, and when scaled can fail to yield positive results and even have negative consequences (Al-Ubaydli, List & Suskind, 2017; List, 2022). This paper describes intensive participatory action research (PAR) strategies as a form of translational science responding to implementation problems (Woolf, 2008). First, the presentation contextualizes PAR as it was impactful for policy formation by the Hull House research team (Addams, 1899; Muncy, 1991), and as it has been impactful for present social welfare policy in Israel (Krumer Nevo, 2022) and a U.S. urban barrio (Gonzalez, 2007).

Methods: The participatory action strategies to be discussed, with their substantive contributions, include:

• Youth peer-to-peer program evaluations (N=212) yielding insights into the mechanisms youth perceive as advancing their personal development;

• Intensive, qualitative interviews with 34 African American caregivers and youth yielding an innovative theory of developing dignity against racial discrimination and a racial socialization intervention;

• A public investigation (Fine, 2016) carried out by 30 youth during the covid-19 pandemic shutdown that indicated the deprivations of water, food, and medical care their 365 community members of color in low-income communities were enduring,

• Community forums as intensive member-checking strategies and sources of data.
  

Results: The presentation describes specific PAR contributions, including 1) developing community interventions including out of school program curricula and a street-based social work practice model grounded in accompaniment and human rights principles, and 2) advancing culturally relevant theory, 3) community empowerment, 4) shifting societal narratives, and 5) framing policy imperatives based on community members' expertise about themselves and their social conditions. Next, the presentation addresses how youth and community member co-researchers describe the impact of being co-researchers for them. Data from participants indicate the participatory strategies to be described mitigate the alienation that community members of color experiencing poverty often report regarding university-based research teams that misunderstand and do not positively impact their communities (Scharff et al., 2010) . Community members also shared that being research participants had immediate “voltage” for them: co-researcher experiences and co-authorship roles contributed to building participants’ human capital, self-confidence, and connections with professional and academic opportunities.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings unearthed facts about suffering based on income and race that otherwise were silenced. Further, CBPAR processes contributed strengths-based mid-level theories, counteracted racist social narratives with evidence-based facts about youth in high-burden communities, led to co-designing interventions community members find positively impactful, developed innovative research methods, and advanced policy changes amplifying opportunities for high-burden community members. PAR appears as a distinctive epistemology that creates a unique, relational ontology causing benefits for community members, practitioners, and policymakers. Findings imply that researchers using PAR do not have to experience an implementation gap: they can co-create deeply positive impacts while carrying out research.