Research Readiness Partnership Protocol

OVERVIEW

A roadmap for community-academic research teams to engage in equitable partnerships, that achieve significant public health impact, especially during times of crisis.

• Provides research methods, findings, along with a detailed timeline, recommendations and resources all co-created with community partners based on three concurrent crises: the Flint Water Crisis, COVID-19, and systemic racism

• Freely available under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA

INNOVATION

When the Flint Water Crisis began in April 2014, Flint citizens were the first to sound the alarm. Community members appealed to officials at all levels of government for eighteen months, citing concerns about the discolored, foul-smelling water and its devastating impact on community health. Local, state, and federal government officials, public health agencies, and academic institutions failed to respond to the community’s concerns with the immediacy warranted by the crisis.

While many long-standing community-academic partnerships have been sustained in Flint, MI, these relationships were insufficient to achieve urgent action against the crisis. One such partnership was between the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR) funded via a Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2007 and the Community Based Organization Partners (CBOP), an umbrella intermediate community-based organization representing Flint-serving entities. To address the problems highlighted by the Flint Water Crisis, an aim was written into the 2018-2023 CTSA grant funding period, for the MICHR Community Engagement program, and a Workgroup convened to conduct this Flint-focused work.

Specifically, this community-academic Workgroup was tasked to design, implement, and disseminate a disaster response study, the Research Readiness and Partnership Protocol (R2P2). The Workgroup utilized community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles (Israel, BA, 2011) to ensure community engagement in all aspects of the research process. In the midst of this work, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and the Genesee County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution declaring that racism is a public health crisis. This prompted the Workgroup to expand its scope to incorporate the three concurrent crises; water quality/lead poisoning, COVID-19, and environmental and systemic racism. The purpose of R2P2 is to serve as a roadmap for community-academic partners to engage in equitable research partnerships, that achieve significant public health impact, especially during times of crisis. R2P2 provides a detailed timeline, research methods, and findings, along with recommendations and resources all co-created with community partners.

BENEFITS

Developed by community-academic partners using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles for collaborating and facilitating group research, the R2P2 provides:

• A roadmap was developed based on equitable cross-sector work including an extensive literature review, key interviews, and a collaborative analysis.

• A living detailed timeline of the Flint Water Crisis is furnished.

• Guidelines, recommendations, and resources to inform a rapid research response to public health emergencies during all phases of a crisis.

• A framework for a digital model is outlined.

MARKET APPLICATIONS

• Community partners

• Academic groups

• Municipal, State, and Federal Government

OTHER

Copyright notice:

© 2017 The Regents of the University of Michigan & Community Based Organization Partners

Created by Susan Woolford, Athena McKay, Don Vereen, Noelle Gorka, Kendra Juliette, Vaishali Nambiar, Arlene Sparks, Bettina Campbell, Ella Greene-Moton, Luther Evans, Sarah Bailey, Eli Samuels, E. Hill De Loney, Kent Key, DeWaun Robinson, and Patricia Piechowski. - www.michr.umich.edu, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA.

For commercial use, contact Innovation Partnerships via the Contact link in the Actions section at the top right-hand side of this page, or by email at innovationpartnerships@umich.edu.

Related information:

The Research Readiness Partnership Protocol was created by faculty and staff from the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR) at the University of Michigan, and with community partners from Community Based Organizational Partners (CBOP).

Research biographies:

Questions

Additional information can be found on the MICHR website at michr.umich.edu and the CBOP website at https://www.flintcbop.com/

For questions, you may contact Athena McKay, MICHR Community Engagement Program Manager mathena@med.umich.edu