PARTNERSHIP

Witness for Wellness blends two traditions and approaches to intervention and research:

1. The Healthy African American Families and Charles R Drew Medical University and Project EXPORT community participatory partnership research (CPPR) approach, which addresses critical health concerns of communities through programs driven by community concerns and insights and developed, implemented, and documented in equal partnership with universities. This approach has been applied to a number of health concerns such as low-birth weight infants and childhood asthma.

Key features of the CPPR approach that have grounded Witness for Wellness include:

Trust, Respect, and Participation: The HAAF approach promotes trust among partners, respectful exchange of differences, and active participation, and faciltiates these processes through active listening and dialogue, celebration of similarities and differences, and inclusiveness.

Knowledge and Experience: The HAAF approach values the knowledge and experience of all participants, whether University PhDs or PhDs of the sidewalk, or who live within the community.

Equal Partnership: Many research efforts are based on a top-down approach driven by researchers that can lead to effective programs that are often not sustained after the research studies in communities. This approach may contribute to a split between the promise of research and trust and use of research-based findings in communities. Equal partnership honors and respects the contributions of all participants, while acknowledging differences in what strengths participants bring to the table.

The Community is First: The HAAF approach is based on placing the community first and respecting and honoring the community voice, especially at times of conflict between the priorities of researchers and community. However, such conflict is often avoided through inclusion and participation of community and researchers together in the full process of program and research development.

The Community is All of Us: In the HAAF approach, all participants are part of the community, even though everyone brings different skills to the table.

2. The evidence-based approaches to improving depression care in community-based practices and for community populations, developed through the UCLA/RAND NIMH Center for Research on Quality in Managed Care and Drew University. These approaches follow national guidelines for appropriate care for depression, based on the best available scientific data and medical opinion, and have been studied in rigorous research, conducted in different regions of the country and across diverse cultural and age groups. The series of studies that have led to these approaches include the Medical Outcomes Study, Partners in Care, We Care, IMPACT, and We Care. These studies developed ways to improve medical care for depression, or ways to help low-income women obtain care even if they were not already receiving any care, and then evaluated their impact on depressed people. | See Key Findings from these studies

Similarly to the CPPR approach, research approaches are built on HAAF priniciples. The goal is to build trust and demystify research through an inclusive approach that involves community in all phases of research in which researchers and community members are all subjects. Key features of research are:

Look and Listen: We look at the research evidence for programs and we listen to diverse community perspectives.

Record: We record what we have heard and seen. Data are available in the lead academic and university settings.

Share: We share what we have learned through presentations, publications, the media and other approaches.

For more information on research activities, survey results, presentations and research resources | Go To Research