Growing a Community-Academic Partnership: Lessons Learned in Forming a Qualitative Interview Team for the Community Partners in Care Study

By engaging, partnering, and building trust with community members, research on vul­nerable populations may offer opportunities to improve population health in communi­ties that suffer from health disparities. While the literature on participatory and partnered approaches offers techniques and strategies for forming community-academic partner­ships, less information is available about how partnerships can grow and evolve over time. In this article, we describe the expansion of a long-standing partnership that uses prin­ciples of community partnered participatory research (CPPR), a variant of community-based participatory research (CBPR). We outline the preparation and executive phases of conducting qualitative interviewing with highly vulnerable study participants who have already been participants in a longitu­dinal survey. We describe the challenges and concerns at each phase of the research and summarize some lessons learned. To grow and evolve, the partnership must constantly be reaffirmed in the experiences of new members.Ethn Dis. 2018;28(Suppl 2):365- 370; doi:10.18865/ed.28.S2.365.