Community-Based Participatory Research.  Empowering Communities for Change.

Madras OR (July 3, 2008) The Mountain View Hospital Foundation's CHIP is currently carrying out a grant from the Northwest Health Foundation to engage in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR).  CBPR partners communities, including small, rural communities like Madras , with university-based academic researchers to study community-identified issues, and generate solutions to those issues that the community can support.  The findings from traditional research based in academic centers, like OHSU, take upwards of 17 years from the time a concept is determined to be promising, like a new drug or treatment regimen, to the time it is actually considered standard practice in any given community.  CBPR, with it's emphasis on community engagement and by-in, holds the promise of slashing that time, yielding relevant findings that can be put into practice much sooner.

The Mountain View CBPR Partnership, made up of CHIP members as well as new partners, received intensive training this last spring in research techniques, ethical research conduct, and the latest in child obesity research as part of it's partnership development phase.  The next phase of the assessment grant will be protocol development and surveillance data collection of Body Mass Index in Head Starts, grades 3, 6, 8, and 11 in the 509J School District .  Surveillance data tells us about populations, not individuals, which is information that communities are currently lacking, and which would serve to inform many of the subsequent grant and project efforts. 

Parents will need to consent to their children participating, as is standard for ethical research, and the protocols will dictate consistency of data collection procedures with an emphasis on privacy, anonymity, and respectfulness.  The data will be used to influence project selection as well as policy in the schools and community.

If you have questions about this project, please feel free to call Beth Ann Beamer, CHIP Director, at 541-475-3882 ext. 2436.