NCC Functions

Provides guidance to individual PRCs and is a resource for their community committees.
Makes recommendations about how community committees can share information and better serve the individual centers as well as the national program.
Facilitates training of community members and advocates for prevention research.

Promoting CBPR

The NCC seeks to sustain health and prevent disease in communities by supporting the PRC Program and its use of the community-based participatory research (CBPR) model.

The committee helps members promote CBPR through advocacy training; for example, at the 2009 NCC annual meeting, the committee provided a CBPR workshop for members. The committee promotes CBPR with external partners by working with funding organizations to incorporate CBPR in requests for proposals and by writing letters of recommendation for PRCs.

Maintaining Productive Relationships

The NCC promotes consistent and effective organizational practices that support equality between PRC staff and community committees. The NCC advises PRC community committees to meet four or more times per year to review the PRC core projects, train committee members on processes for CBPR, and evaluate or assess the PRC’s processes for CBPR with committee members. The NCC has developed a Community Partnership Engagement Award to recognize PRCs that follow these recommendations.

Recording Community Participation

The NCC helps PRCs define and document community committee members’ participation in center activities by maintaining a roster that records members’ contact information, areas of expertise, affiliations, and networks. This document also captures the amount of training members have in CBPR and other practices, and their understanding of the goals of their PRC. Each PRC’s community liaison (or other designated person) and the NCC representative ensure that each community committee member provides information to the NCC for the roster.

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