Improving collaboration between researchers and communities

Active collaboration between communities and researchers is critical to dev eloping appropriate public health research strategies that address communit y concerns. To capture the perspectives of inner-city Seattle communities a bout issues in community-researcher partnerships, Seattle Partners for Heal thy Communities conducted interviews with community members from the ethnic ally diverse neighborhoods of Central and Southeast Seattle. The results su ggest that effective community-researcher collaborations require a paradigm shift from traditional practices to an approach that involves: acknowledgi ng community contributions, recruiting and training minority people to part icipate in research teams, improving communication, sharing power, and valu ing respect and diversity.