COMMUNITY PARTNERS IN CARE RECEIVES 2015 CCPH ANNUAL AWARD
May 28, 2015 – Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) is delighted to announce Community Partners in Care as the recipient of its 2015 annual award. The award highlights the power and potential of partnerships between communities and academic institutions as a strategy for social justice and health equity. It honors community-campus partnerships that are striving to achieve the systems and policy changes needed to overcome the root causes of health, social, environmental and economic inequalities.
Community Partners in Care is a community-academic partnership that uses Community Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR) to build community capacity to improve the quality of life of clients with depression in under-resourced communities of color through rigorous partnered research. This collaboration occurs among many community-based agencies, social services, and healthcare organizations for communities of color, especially African Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles County (LAC).
Over ten years ago, academic leaders of the partnership completed a major national study called Partners in Care, which suggested that implementing a chronic disease management approach to collaborative care for depression in primary care sites improved the quality of care for both whites and minorities (African Americans and Latinos). However, this approach led to 4-5 times the outcome improvements for minorities than for whites, both initially and after 5-10 years of follow-up. A key question that emerged from this study was how to translate the promise of high quality care for depression into a public health reality in low-income communities of color.
In 2003, Dr. Kenneth Wells of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Research ANd Development Corporation (RAND), the Principal Investigator of the Partners in Care study, approachedLoretta Jones, CEO of Healthy African American Families II (HAAFII), a leading health advocacy organization in South Los Angeles, to determine how to apply the findings of that study to communities of color in Los Angeles. This initiated a remarkable partnership based on community-based participatory research (CBPR) and NIH-defined principles of community engagement, Community Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR).
As explained in the partnership’s application, “A council representing all stakeholder perspectives guides the initiative and supports workgroups to develop and implement components, reporting back to the larger community through once or twice a year, community conferences for feedback and to obtain support.” There is a signed memorandum between lead institutional partners which outlines CPPR principles, roles and responsibilities, partnership structure, shared data ownership, resource allocation, scientific manuscript authorship, and handling disagreements between partners.
The Center for Health Services and Society; Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; RAND Corporation; Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Services; Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry; Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute; and Healthy African American Families II are all integral members of Community Partners in Care.
Reviewers chose to honor Community Partners in Care for the 2015 CCPH Annual Award and overwhelmingly praised the breadth and depth of the partnership and the excellent modeling they used in joining of randomized clinical trial methodology and CBPR/CPPR. One reviewer remarked, “The decision making appears to be done equitably, including decisions regarding their fiscal allocations.” Another reviewer lauded the excellent, wide range of partnership strategies Community Partners in Care initiated working through conflict among partners. Finally, the clear and definable examples of capacity building appeared central to the partnership in developing their structure and through the process they used to generate evidence-based decision making, practices, and outcome impacts in mental health in communities.
CCPH Associate Director Faye Ziegeweid presented the award at C2U Expo in Ottawa, Canada on May 27th. Accepting the award on behalf of the partnership were Bowen Chung of UCLA and Loretta Jones of HAAF.
In her remarks presenting the award, Ms. Ziegeweid noted. “I am honored to introduce this year’s award recipient. Their partnership embodies the CCPH Principles of Partnership and has created change lasting well beyond a single process or event.”
Also announced at C2UExpo was the partnership that received an Honorable Mention: Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) in Boston, MA. This partnership is working to integrate science, civic engagement, community empowerment for environmental health improvements and social justice. Tufts University is the lead partner with core community partners from the City of Somerville and Boston Chinatown organizations such as the Boston Chinatown Resident Association and the Chinese Progressive Association. The partnership's work addressing the high exposure of pollutants from Interstate-93 and local residents’ concern about air quality, specifically chronic exposure to ultrafine particles and its impact on health and the risk of cardiovascular disease was also worthy of recognition.
