Increasing the Capacity for Community-University Collaboration Generates Impactful Research - the Padres Informados Collaboration Experience.

Purpose: Advances in community health calls for long term community-university collaboration. Quality collaboration leads to impactful research and sustainable prevention programming; however, few studies have examined processes contributing to long term benefits. Padres Informados/Jóvenes Preparados (Padres) is a CBPR collaboration that developed a tobacco and other substance use prevention intervention. The many positive outcomes of the Padres 7-year collaboration include other studies. The program titled ‘Latino Fathers Promoting Healthy Youth Behaviors’ is an obesity prevention focused federally funded CBPR study. A foundational factor in the early Padres work was the focus on the capacity for collaboration.

This presentation explores collaboration capacity and its association with the strength of the collaboration. We assessed collaboration among community and university partners annually for 3 years, evaluating 1) collaborative processes, and 2) connection among collaborators CC.

Methods: An online survey was administered to all collaboration participants in three study years. Participants from collaborating agencies (three social service, two clinics, one public school, and one University Extension site) included directors, organization staff, and the core research team.

Survey items were adapted from published measures (Israel, 2006). Collaborative processes addressed five domains: Collective impact (4 items), Trust (6 items), Satisfaction with engagement (2 items), Transparency (4 items), and Organizational Capacity (5 items). The five domains had a likert-type scale (0 = Not at all; 1 = To slight extent; 2 = To moderate extent; 3 = To great extent). CC measures included 7 items, one rating per organization, with questions such as: ‘How is your organization connected to other agencies involved in this project?’ Response options were: no collaboration=0 (aware of this organization) to strong collaboration=3 (constant communication, shared decisions regarding resources). Analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation, and SNA (one node) using UCINET 6.4 software.

Results: Participants responses’ indicated increase in collaborative process scores and increase in connection among collaborators (depth and density). In three out of five domains, significant changes in the intended direction were evident (Trust, Satisfaction and Org. Capacity), two were marginal not significant (Collective Impact and Transparency). Statistically significant positive correlation (p<.05) between the organizational capacity and CC scores (r=.48). The single node SNA indicates the depth and density among collaborators improved over time.

Conclusions: The strength of collaboration and organizational capacity has improved over time, and their positive association is prelaminar evidence that quality of collaboration in the Padres project may lead to projects beyond the scope of the present research.