Community Leadership Institute for Equity: Planning Processes and Procedures to Develop Partnered Conferences.

Abstract

Background: Community-partnered participatory research (CPPR) is a research approach that supports equitable collaboration of community and academic co-leaders in research and policy. Despite CPPR's 25-year history, infrastructure supporting community members in bidirectional learning has not been formalized.

Objective: This paper describes processes and procedures using CPPR to plan conferences to develop community leadership training infrastructure.

Methods: We utilized rapid ethnographic analysis to examine conference planning processes for community leadership in CPPR. Community and academic leaders in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Chicago met weekly over two months to plan, given COVID-19, three Zoom conferences on a leadership training institute for CPPR, with planning for (1) community co-leadership in research and policy; (2) local and national CPPR programs; and (3) models for bidirectional training.

Results: The planning process emphasized bidirectional learning for community and academic members for research and services/policy to benefit communities, within a Community Leadership Institute for Equity (C-LIFE) to promote equity and power sharing for community leaders. The planning process identified major themes of framing of C-LIFE conference planning goals, developing the conference structure, promoting equity and diversity, envisioning the future of CPPR, challenges, collaborations, future curriculum ideas for C-LIFE, evaluation and next-steps for Zoom conferences in November 2020.

Conclusions: It was feasible to use CPPR to plan Zoom conferences to promote community leadership training across multiple sites. Key planning themes included promoting equity, addressing structural racism, bidirectional learning and integrating community, academic, and policy priorities with community co-leaders as change agents.