Developing Strategic and Collaborative Community-Academic Partnerships to Improve Community Health, From Moving Upstream to Getting at the Root.

Community partners have experienced inequity and lack of transparency in funding practices. Funding for community partners is a critical component of community-engaged research, as it influences community trust and opportunities. We compared contextual and site-specific factors at 2 centers (in New York City; Los Angeles and Orange Counties, CA) with different community-funding approaches, which influence institutional capacity to partner with and support community-based organizations. We describe community participatory and engaged research activities in two centers in a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities-funded national consortium, describing each center's process for funding community-based organizations. We present lessons learned from ongoing collaborative efforts between community-based organizations, community action boards, and research institutions. We discuss successes and opportunities for growth in our efforts to support community-based organization partners, resources to help sustain their health equity programs, the importance of long-term institutional investment to sustain this type of support, and the potential for institutional-level changes that increase trustworthiness and sustainable outcomes. We advocate for systemic changes in institutional focus and resource investment to better respond to community needs. (Am J Public Health. 2025;115(S2):S152-S163. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308092).