SIG: Strengths, Challenges, and Future Directions of Community Based Participatory Research in the Context of Prevention Programming

CBPR combines empirically-based intervention strategies with input from key school and community stakeholders. This approach empowers diverse participants to become involved in the development of programs and helps ensure that the resultant program is acceptable, meaningful, and respectful. Although there has been a proliferation of CBPR projects over the past several decades, there are numerous challenges associated with CBPR, including that this approach is time consuming, requires patience, and may involve needing to overcome an understandable lack of trust from communities towards researchers from academic institutions. Nonetheless, there are many benefits stemming from CBPR that warrant its use. Some key benefits include increasing the pertinence and usefulness of research data for participating partners; bringing together individuals with varying skills, expertise, and knowledge to address complicated societal issues; enhancing the quality, sensitivity, and validity of research by incorporating the perspectives of local community members; and increasing the likelihood of reducing distrust towards research and/or researchers by community members.  In this interactive discussion we will consider the strengths, challenges, and future directions of using CBPR in the context of prevention and intervention programming.