The University of New Mexico’s Center for Participatory Research has been awarded a grant of $2 million by the National Institute of Health.
The grant will help researchers at the center address key gaps in how community-engaged research projects are evaluated, according to a UNM HSC press release.
Nina Wallerstein, director of the Center for Participatory Research, said that the grant is the next step for the community-academic engagement, as partnerships with communities continue to grow.
“The field needs methods and tools to measure and strengthen partnerships that promote community ownership and sustainability,” the press release quoted Wallerstein as saying. “These partnerships are critical in order to improve health equity in the long-run, especially true when research grant funding ends.”
According to the release, the NIH believes that community-based participatory research projects could help reduce health disparities among underprivileged communities.
“We need to identify standardized quantitative and qualitative tools for evaluation of these research projects, yet still support partnerships to choose additional local indicators of success based on their own culture and context,” Wallerstein was quoted as saying in the statement.
With the grant, “Advancing CBPR Practice Through a Collective Reflection and Measurement Toolkit,” researchers will work to develop a “tool kit” capable of effectively evaluating community engaged projects, according to the release.
The researchers will begin by surveying some 350 federally funded research partnerships, including pilot projects within the UNM Clinical & Translational Science Center and similar research centers across the country, according to the statement.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
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