Text for Figures and Slides in TB Behavioral
and Social Science Research Forum Proceedings
SHARPENING THE FOCUS ON TURNING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE:
THE PROMISE OF PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH APPROACHES
Shawna Mercer, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Health Scientist,
Public Health Practice Program Office, Office of the Director
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Slide #1: This slide shows the logos
for the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
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Slide #2: Sharpening the Focus on Turning
Research into Practice: The Promise of Participatory Research Approaches
Shawna L. Mercer, PhD, MSc
Office of Science and Extramural Research
Public Health Practice Program Office
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
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Slide #3: Bottleneck in Translating Public
Health Research into Practice
- There is insufficient recognition of the complexities inherent in
putting public health research findings into practice across diverse
communities, settings, and situations
- To be relevant for practice, research must meet diverse practice
needs
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Slide #4: Challenges for Taking Research Results
to Practice
1. Internal vs. external validity (generalizability):
- Internal:
- Are we measuring what we purport to measure?
- External:
- How applicable is this to real-world rural settings and situations?
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Slide #5: Challenges for Taking Research
Results to Practice
2. Best practices vs. locally appropriate and affordable practices
- For special populations
- e.g., minority populations in rural areas
- In underserved areas
- For those of lower socioeconomic status, lower education
- Behavioral vs. medical interventions
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Slide #6: Best Practice Application Gaps
- Accessibility gap
- Do I have the same resources as the experimenters?
- Credibility gap
- How different is their situation of practice from mine?
- Expectations gap
- Is it really necessary for me to strive for such lofty goals
in my practice?
- Lancaster B. Closing the gap between research and practice.
Health Educ Q 1992;19:408-411
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Slide #7: A Solution for Taking Research
Results to Practice
- An upstream approach
- By actively engaging practitioners, policy makers, community
members in the research process, it is more likely the results will
be relevant to their needs
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Slide #8: Participatory Research is…
- “Systematic inquiry
- With the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied
- For the purposes of education and taking action or effecting social
change”
Green, et al., 1995
Study of Participatory Research in Health Promotion.
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Slide #9: What is Participatory Research?
- It is not a method
- It is an approach
- Involves engaging potential users and beneficiaries of the research
in the research process
- A wide range of study designs and research methods can be used
- Selection depends on the research questions and feasibility
issues
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Slide #10: Whose Participation Should
be Sought?
- Who is to be affected by the research results?
- Geographic communities
- Other groups sharing common characteristics
- Ethnic groups, practitioners, policy makers, health departments
- Minority or special populations living in rural settings
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Slide #11: This slide includes a cartoon drawing
with the quotation, “Mom, Dad’s been doing participatory research
again.”
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Slide #12: How Much Participation is Needed?
- At a minimum:
- helping to formulate research questions
- interpreting and applying the research findings
- Possibly also:
- Selecting and using methods
- Analyzing data
- Rule of thumb:
- Dependent on complexity and labor-intensiveness of methods and
analyses
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Slide #13: Considerations in Developing OSER’s
Extramural Prevention Research Grant Program (EPRP)
- Tenets of participatory research:
- Grass-roots initiative
- Local control and autonomy
- What are the implications for funding, supporting, judging (not threatening
or undermining) participatory research?
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Slide #14: Needs and Preferences of Researchers
and Practitioners
- A vision for participatory research
- Adequate time for true participation
- Investigator-initiated research
- External peer-review
- Infrastructure capacity, methodology, and other cross-cutting issues
- Multiple levels of intervention
- Take research results to scale and sustain effects
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Slide #15: OSER Grant Funding FY2003-2005: Community-Based
Participatory Prevention Research
- To stimulate investigator-initiated participatory research on community-based
approaches to prevention
- Multi-disciplinary
- Multi-level research
- Community
- Cross-cutting
- Caveat: guided by community needs
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Slide #16: This slide includes a map of the
United States indicating the number of community-based participatory prevention
research grants (n=435).
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Slide #17: EPRP’s Second Round of Grants: Response
and Funding
- Response:
- 570 letters of intent (LOI)
- 311 full applications
- Funding:
- 40+ projects approved for funding
- ~$11.4 million
- ~25 projects funded
- Each project: ~$450,000 per year for 3 years
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Slide #18: Range of Projects Funded
- Cross-cutting research such as:
- Diabetes, asthma, obesity
- physical activity, nutrition, tobacco prevention, drug prevention,
violence/injury prevention
- youth and school-based health
- workforce development
- reduction of health disparities
- Increasing access to care
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Slide #19: Diabetes in Hispanic Appalachians
- Issue:
- Growing numbers of Hispanics moving into rural Appalachia (migrant
and permanent)
- High levels of diabetes; low access to care
- Research team:
- East Tennessee State University Researchers
- Hispanic community and provider partners
- Site:
- Intervention:
- Development of tailored interventions to enhance detection, management,
and prevention of diabetes
- Education to increase the capacity of Hispanic community to identify
and solve its other health problems
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Slide #20: References
- Green LW & Mercer SL. Can public health researchers and agencies
reconcile the push from funding bodies and the pull from communities?
American Journal of Public Health. 2001;91:1926-1929.
- Minkler M & Wallerstein N (Eds.). Community-Based Participatory
Research for Health. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
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