The community-based participatory research (CBPR) model is largely intended to address specific inequalities of marginalized or diverse ethnic populations in a variety of areas. In the United States, especially in terms of health statistics and the application of preventative treatment, these vulnerable populations are afflicted in far greater numbers than the mainstream median population.
However, CBPR is more than simply a way to redress shortcomings in the prevention of disease and debilitating or chronic conditions. In the article below, we’ll discuss what is entailed within this model and why it touches every aspect of scientific and social endeavors.
What’s in a Name: Defining a Scientific Model
While it’s often referenced in terms of the health sciences and provision of adequate medical treatment within marginalized ethnic groups, the community-based participatory research model has been applied in almost every scientific and social context relevant to life in the United States and worldwide. But what precisely does such a model entail?
Strictly defined, the CBPR model is a collaborative approach that incorporates voices of the subject community to ensure equitable treatment in a culturally relevant, effective manner. Moreover, it often starts with a problem or question that is salient to the members of the community and draws on the particular strengths, cultural perspectives, and needs of that group. Its primary goal is combining shared knowledge and cooperative action to achieve better health outcomes, social autonomy, and often an elimination of health disparities.
Origins and Challenges of the Model
Western medicine, the field primarily concerned with CBPR endeavors has its roots in the Enlightenment of Western Europe. While the founding schools of though often emphasize an outlook based on empirical observation, our institutions and practitioners of western medicine are often canalized and impacted by cultural considerations drawn from Colonialism. While we are moving towards greater equity and attention to indigenous or marginalized knowledge, the impacts of the Colonial system linger.
In the United States, particularly among Native Americans—but also within immigrant populations, such as the Hmong, and traditionally marginalized ethnicities, such as African Americans—there is a striking disparity in rates of heart disease, chronic nutritional deficits, autoimmune disorders, and mental health disorders, as well as a shocking shortfall in the life expectancy of many in these communities.
During his administration, President Clinton issued a directive that this gap must be closed by 2010 in the spirit of American equality. The CBPR model is one method through which this is being accomplished. It vests all participants of an experiment, a study, or a program with equal involvement. The Subject-object relationship of many research programs in the past devalued the indigenous viewpoint, assigning causes of problems based on assumptions rather than empirical evidence. This led to maladaptive public health initiatives and often-harmful measures instituted without the consent of the marginalized group, often with harmful consequences.
In the current milieu of public health and medical understanding, communities are now invited to fully participate in the solutions to problems that many have lived with for decades. While the health gaps are still present between many ethnic groups and the predominant Anglo-American culture, they are slowly closing. With a participant-based model, factors such as socioeconomic status, cultural belief systems, political stance, and even the historical dialectic between ethnicities are taken into account when examining health standards and statistics of a community. Precisely because it is deeply inclusive, the community-based participatory research model offers an equal stake in bringing high standards of public health to all communities, with salient concerns or problems and focused, relevant research practices.
