Community-based Participatory Approaches

A Community-based participatory approach (CBPA) to promoting health is recognized as a critical strategy in addressing health inequities among socially disadvantaged and marginalized communities. From the beginning of a CBPA project, community members are invited to share decision-making authority with all other partners involved.

According to Barbara A. Israel, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health – University of Michigan, CBPA is based on principles that include:

• Recognizing the community as a unit of identity
• Building on collective strengths and shared resources
• Facilitating partnership and capacity building throughout the process
• Disseminating pertinent information, data and other findings to all participants
• Involving a long-term process and commitment
• Seeking balance between research and action

It is important to engage the most trusted members of the community, “gatekeepers,” right from the beginning of the project to ensure the promotion of an intervention. By empowering community leaders through the CBPA, the entire community can help steer the project towards goal achievement.

Additional Resources

• Community-Academic Partnerships: Principles, Rationale, Challenges, and Facilitating Factors
• Community-Campus Partnership for Health: Community-Based Participatory Research
• Diabetes and Health Disparities: Community-Based Approaches for Racial and Ethnic Populations
• Participatory Policy Analysis: Achieving Systems Level Change Through CBPR (People's Policy Institute)
• Power and Sustainability in Health Promotion: Global Perspectives
• Researchers and Their Communities: The Challenge of Meaningful Community Engagement
• Resources for Community-Based Participatory Research
• Speaking Trust, Creating Power: A Guide to Policy Work for Community-Based Participatory Research Practitioners
• “The Value and Challenges of Participatory Research: Strengthening its practice”
• Working with Communities to Define the Change They Want to See (People's Policy Institute)