Publishing Diverse Products of Community-Engaged Scholarship

Posted by on November 9, 2009

Online Resource for Publishing Diverse Products of Community-Engaged Scholarship Now Available

Peer Review Process Helps to Ensure Products “Count” in Promotion and Tenure Decisions & Make a Difference in Communities

For more information, email info@CES4Health.info or visit http://www.CES4Health.info.   The text below is available as a PDF at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/PressRelease-CES4Healthf.pdf

November 3, 2009 – Today marks the public launch of CES4Health.info, a free online resource for publishing diverse products of community-engaged scholarship.  The first twelve products accepted by CES4Health.info – including a film about health impacts of the built environment in post-Katrina New Orleans and a cultural competency curriculum for health professionals – reflect the depth and breadth of knowledge made possible through community-academic partnerships.  And yet regrettably, such products rarely “count” in the faculty promotion and tenure process nor are they routinely disseminated beyond the communities with which the work was conducted. CES4Health.info aims to change this situation by tackling
these challenges head-on.

As CES4Health.info editor Cathy Jordan, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology and Director of the Children, Youth and Family Consortium at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis explains, “Community-based participatory research, service-learning and other community-engaged forms of scholarship require diverse products that reach and benefit community members, practitioners and policy makers.  However, since these products are not typically peer-reviewed and published the way journal articles are, promotion and tenure committees are unable to determine their quality or impact and often discount them.  A product peer-reviewed and published through CES4Health.info is comparable to an article published through a peer-reviewed print or online journal.  Our editorial and peer review processes mirror those of most journals and are based on accepted standards of scholarship.”   Recognizing that the “peers” in community-engaged scholarship come from the community and the academy, all products posted on CES4Health.info have been reviewed and recommended by expert academic and community reviewers.

Faculty members who author products that are published through CES4Health.info can note them in the peer-reviewed publications section of their curriculum vitae and describe them as peer-reviewed scholarly products.  CES4Health.info also provides authors with a measure of impact by tracking how often each product is accessed and how it is used.

CES4Health.info is a component of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health’s Faculty for the Engaged Campus project.  The project aims to strengthen community-engaged career paths in the academy and is supported by a grant from the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. The seed for CES4Health.info was planted by the WK Kellogg Foundation-funded Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Health Professions, which recommended in its 2005 report, “Linking Scholarship and Communities,” that such a mechanism be established.

CES4Health.info is led by an editorial team of four exemplary community-engaged scholars.  Editor Cathy Jordan is joined by Associate Editors Janice Bowie, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD; Suzanne Cashman, Professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA; and Jean Schensul, Senior Scientist and Founding Director of the Institute for
Community Research in Hartford, CT.

“This is an extremely important and timely initiative,” notes Eric Bass, Editor of the journal Progress in Community Health Partnerships and member of the CES4Health.info design team. “Universities across the country are showing increased interest in community-engaged scholarship.  In the fields of medicine and public health alone, the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards and the CDC Prevention Research Centers are developing innovative products ranging from health promotion program manuals to community-engaged research training modules. However, faculty members and their community partners need new venues for disseminating their work. CES4Health.info helps to address this need.”

Chuck Conner, Coordinator of the Winding Roads Health Consortium in West Virginia agrees.  “As a community-based peer reviewer for CES4Health.info, what excites me most about this new resource is its potential to widely disseminate high quality products that can improve the health of communities.”

Diverse products of health-related community-engaged scholarship in English from anywhere in the world can be submitted to CES4Health.info at any time – a two-step process that involves completing an online application form and submitting the actual product.  CES4Health.info defines ‘health-related’ broadly to include, for example, health care, public health, health policy and the social determinants of health – such as education, food security, housing, income and its distribution, and social support.  See pages below for information about the first 12 products to be peer-reviewed and published through CES4Health.info.

Visit http://www.CES4Health.info to submit products, search for products, and apply to be a peer reviewer.

Learn more about CES4Health.info during sessions at these upcoming conferences:

Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Annual Meeting in Washington DC, January 22, 2010 session on Unlocking the Reward System: Faculty for the Engaged Campus from 10:30 – 11:45 am
http://www.aacu.org/meetings/annualmeeting/index.cfm

AAC&U Network for Academic Renewal Conference, March 25-27, 2010, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (session date and time TBD)
http://www.aacu.org/meetings/faculty/2010/index.cfm

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health 11th Conference, Creating the Future We Want to Be: Transformation through Partnerships, May 12-15, 2010, Portland, Oregon (session date and time TBD)
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/conf10-overview.html

Subscribe to CCPH’s Community-Engaged Scholarship Listserv for regular updates on CES4Health.info:
https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/comm-engagedscholarship

INFORMATION ABOUT THE FIRST 12 PRODUCTS TO BE PEER-REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED THROUGH CES4HEALTH.INFO

In Harmony: Reflections, Thoughts, and Hopes of Central City, New Orleans
Caricia Catalani*, Anthony Veneziale, Larry Campbell, Shawna Herbst, Anthony Wilson, Craig McCullough, Darrel Barnes, Jackie Alexander, Jeremiah Sherman, Michele Burton-Oatis, Michael Oatis, Rev. Samson “Skip”
Alexander, Benjamin Springgate, Brittany Butler, Meredith Minkler
*Corresponding author affiliation: University of California, Berkeley

In Harmony is a community-based participatory film about health impacts of the built environment in post-Katrina New Orleans, including housing, education, and employment, produced using videovoice methodology, a health advocacy, education, and research methodology through which people get behind video cameras to research issues of concern, communicate knowledge, and advocate for change. This video was produced by the New Orleans VideoVoice Project, a community-academic-filmmaker partnership for health.

Training for Better Health: A Cultural Competency Curriculum for the Health Professions
Dodi Meyer*, Julia Michie, Milagros Batista, Hetty Cunningham, Patricia Hametz, Mary McCord.
*Corresponding author affiliation: Columbia University Medical Center’s Community Pediatrics Program

This manual provides a train-the-trainer guide for integrating a cultural competency curriculum into the education of health professionals. It provides a complete and complementary set of educational methodologies that are straightforward, easy to implement, simple to adapt, and can be scaled up or down to meet the needs of a particular training program.

Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with Indigenous People
Fay Fletcher*, Cecelia Zoe-Martin, Jim Martin, Nancy Gibson, Rose James, Randy Elliott, La Belle V. Urbanec, Pamela L. James, Greg Miller
*Corresponding author affiliation: University of Alberta

Acknowledging the impact of history and resiliency while capturing the passion of emerging leaders in Indigenous health research, these two videos provide a starting point for discussion on the roles and
responsibilities of community and university partners in collaborative and community-based research. The potential change generated by CBPR in the interface between community partners and leaders and members of post secondary institutions is discussed.

Developing and Sustaining Community-Based Participatory Research Partnerships: A Skill-Building Curriculum
The Examining Community-Institutional Partnerships for Prevention Research Group*
*Corresponding author affiliation: Community-Campus Partnerships for Health

This product is an evidence-based curriculum designed as a tool for use by community-institutional partnerships that are using or planning to use a CBPR approach to improving health. It can be used by partnerships that are just forming as well as existing partnerships. It is intended for use by health professions faculty and researchers, students and post-doctoral fellows, staff of community-based organizations, and staff of public health agencies at all skill levels.

Community Approaches to Mobilizing Partnerships and Service-Learning
Lorece Edwards*, Anita Hawkins
*Corresponding author affiliation: Morgan State University

The Practice Experience/Service Learning Guide is a tool that is used to assist students, faculty, and community health partners in implementing service-learning projects and public health community-based practice. The Practice Experience/Service Learning Guide provides a step-by-step process for community-based practice integrating service-learning from start to finish.

The Community Knowledge Project: Community is a Verb
Michael Montoya*
*Corresponding author affiliation: University of California-Irvine

The Youtube video “Community is a Verb” was inspired and co-developed by a team of students, professionals and lay health advocates to make the case that the social factors of inequity make people ill.

Toolkit to Establish and Sustain Year-Long Walking in Rural Communities
Anna Zendell*, Mary Riley-Jacome
*Corresponding author affiliation: UAlbany Prevention Research Center

A Toolkit has been created to provide guidance for rural communities in upstate New York to create year-long walking programs that address safety, motivation, and sustainment. The winter-based portion of the walking program occurs in the center of rural communities: the local schools, while the outdoors portion is located along local trails or community-identified streets and paths. The Toolkit consists of a Walking Program Guidebook, a Walking Club Leader Manual, and a Survey that was created to evaluate efficacy of the walking program.

The Professional Service Experience: Connecting Students and Communities
Patricia Darbishire*
*Corresponding author affiliation: Purdue University

This manual documents the Professional Service Experience, a one credit-hour, first year pharmacy course at Purdue University. The manual includes the Professional Service Experience course manual, an
introductory PowerPoint presentation and associated assignments and forms.

The CEAL-UNC Collaborative. A Manual for Community Based Participatory Research: Using Research to Improve Practice and Inform Policy in Assisted Living
Karen Love*, Sheryl Zimmerman, Lauren Cohen
*Corresponding author affiliation: Center for Excellence in Assisted Living

This manual is designed to promote and guide the use of CBPR in aging and long-term care research. This manual was informed by a two-year research grant funded by the U.S. Agency for Health Care Research and Quality that was aimed at better understanding medication management practices in long-term care. The manual details the CBPR principles and processes, and also offers specific examples of, and recommendations for, practically implementing CBPR in the field of long-term care.

Homeless Over 50: The Greying of Chicago’s Homeless Population
Christine George*, Marilyn Krogh, Dennis Watson, Judith Wittner, Nancy Radner, Christopher Walker, Christopher Wiens
*Corresponding author affiliation: Loyola University Chicago Center for Urban Research and Learning

This policy report was developed out of a 2-year collaborative study that aimed to obtain a demographic profile of people who are homeless in Chicago between the ages of 50 and 64; to understand how the various systems designed to serve this population do and do not meet their needs; and to begin to suggest a range of policy and programmatic responses to meet the needs of this population.

The Heredity Project: A Web-based Introduction to Genetics for the Purpose of Health Promotion
Vicki Park*, Robert Shreve
*Corresponding author affiliation: University of Tennessee Health Science Center

The Heredity Project is a genetic literacy program to enable responsible and effective use of genomic medicine as part of routine healthcare. Across different health topics, a central theme of the project is to
enable a better understanding of the nature and distribution of genetic variation as it pertains to health and disease. As part of the project’s dissemination efforts, this web-based introduction has been developed and
launched for full public access.

The AgrAbility Project: Rehabilitating Farmers and Ranchers
Millee Jorge*, Carla Wilhite
*Corresponding author affiliation: Langston University, School of Physical Therapy

Rehabilitating Farmers and Ranchers, offers the rehabilitation professional the perspective of an occupational therapist and a physical therapist who advocate for farmers and ranchers remaining in agriculture and participating in agrarian life with assistive technology that can safely assure their continued engagement. The aims of the video are to describe opportunities physical rehabilitation professionals have to maximize the clinical interventions with individuals working in agriculture and to illustrate the clinical case management of farmers and ranchers with disabilities who have resumed their lives in agriculture
after injury.