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Jan 29, 2013

SLEHC Announces Winner of Community Health Research Award

The Charities’ announced Tuesday that the partnership of Gulf Coast Community Services Association, The University of Texas Prevention Research Center, The Communities In Schools and The Houston Department of Health and Human Services is the winner of their first $20,000 Community Health Research Award.  Sheila Savannah of HDHHS will serve as the Research Program Director.

 

The award was designed to fund a non-traditional community-academic partnership demonstrating creative use of the Charities’ prioritized research approaches (also understood as community-based participatory research and mixed methods) and the Charities’ research resources -- their Healthy Neighborhood Initiatives, Project Safety Net or the Breast Health Portal -- all of which can be found on the organization’s website at www.slehc.org.

 

The research project, titled Using Participatory Action Research To Mobilize Organizations to Address Healthy Relationships Among Youth in Greater Sunnyside Neighborhoods, Houston, TX, seeks to answer the following research questions over the next two years:

 

  1. What are the youth-defined norms, experiences and expectations of healthy relationships?
  2. What youth informed strategies can be developed at the community level focused on promoting healthy relationships?
  3. What impact can youth informed strategies have on community level policies and practices related to promoting healthy relationships?

 

A community based participatory research methodology called youth participatory action research (YPAR) will serve as the overall strategy guiding this work. YPAR is centered within the community based participatory research framework and bridges the gap between traditional research and practical application while at the same time strengthening community capacity to develop culturally relevant strategies, interventions and policy initiatives that directly involve youth in all phases.

 

YPAR implementation involves four phases:

  1. Issue identification, community mapping and peer education training
  2. Community assessment;
  3. Health promotion strategy development
  4. Evaluation and dissemination

 

The Charities established the Community Health Research Award to advance the Charities’ mission of increasing opportunities for health enhancement and disease prevention, especially among underserved people, and making possible measurable improvements in community health status and individual well-being.