Community-Based Participatory Research: A Capacity-Building Approach for Policy Advocacy Aimed at Eliminating Health Disparities

There have been increasing calls for community-academic partnerships to enhance the capacity of partners to engage in policy advocacy aimed at eliminating health disparities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a partnership approach that can facilitate capacity building and policy change through equitable engagement of diverse partners. Toward this end, the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, a long-standing CBPR partnership, has conducted a policy training project. We describe CBPR and its relevance to health disparities; the interface between CBPR, policy advocacy, and health disparities; the rationale for capacity building to foster policy advocacy; and the process and outcomes of our policy advocacy training. We discuss lessons learned and implications for CBPR and policy advocacy to eliminate health disparities. (Am J Public Health. 2010;100:2094-2102. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.170506)