Building and Maintaining Trust in a Community-Based Participatory Research Partnership

• Published in: American journal of public health (1971) Vol. 98; no. 8; pp. 1398 - 1406
• Main Authors: Christopher, Suzanne, Watts, Vanessa, McCormick, Alma Knows His Gun, Young, Sara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC Am Public Health Assoc 01.08.2008; American Public Health Association
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Cervical cancer; Collaboration; Colleges & universities; Community involvement; Community Participation - psychology; Community-Institutional Relations; Cooperative Behavior; Female; Framing Health Matters; Government employees; Health disparities; Health services; Humans; Indians, North American - psychology; Intervention; Male; Medical sciences; Medical screening; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority Groups - psychology; Miscellaneous; Montana; Native North Americans; Participatory research; Program Development; Public health; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; R&D; Research & development; Research - standards; Researcher-Subject Relations - psychology; Researchers; Trust - psychology; Universities; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms - diagnosis; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms - ethnology; White people; Womens health; Human; Organization; Partnership; Cooperation; Scientific research; Community participation; Community action for health; Trust; Public health
• ISSN: 0090-0036; 1541-0048; 1541-0048
• DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2007.125757

Although intervention research is vital to eliminating health disparities, many groups with health disparities have had negative research experiences, leading to an understandable distrust of researchers and the research process. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches seek to reverse this pattern by building trust between community members and researchers. We highlight strategies for building and maintaining trust from an American Indian CBPR project and focus on 2 levels of trust building and maintaining: (1) between university and community partners and (2) between the initial project team and the larger community. This article was cowritten by community and academic partners; by offering the voices of community partners, it provides a novel and distinctive contribution to the CBPR literature.