HIV Community Based Research

Bringing Community & Academia together through research

Engaging Academics

The CBRF facilitates the academic/community relationship from the development of a research question- through the funding process- project delivery- and finally, the dissemination of findings and uptake of research for action and policy development while protecting community interests and ensuring scientific rigour in the results. Particular examples and challenges in partnering academic researchers and diverse HIV communities such as the Aboriginal, IDU, and MSM communities will be explored. The entire field of HIV/AIDS CBR benefits from developing a pool of informed, available academic researchers that can be matched to community groups with a desire to conduct research within their community.

Objectives:

  1. Development of a greater understanding and uptake of the community-based research (CBR) process among academic researchers.
  2. Discuss the challenge of ensuring scientific rigour when utilizing CBR methodology while allowing for organic community process within an established research framework.
  3. Increasing the pool of CBR-informed academic researchers available to participate in community-driven initiatives.
  4. Defining the role of CBRFs for academic researchers as a broker to establish, develop and maintain the partnership between community and academician while ensuring adherence to CBR principles.

As interest in community-based participatory research grows, there is a growing need and demand for educational resources that help build the knowledge and skills needed to develop and sustain effective CBR partnerships.  This evidence-based curriculum is intended as a tool for community-institutional partnerships that are using or planning to use a CBR approach to improving health.  It can be used by partnerships that are just forming as well as mature partnerships.   For an overview of the curriculum, click here

You can view the poster presented at the 2010 Canadian HIV/AIDS Research Conference in Saskatoon on “Engaging Academics”

You can view the poster presented at the 2011 Canadian HIV/AIDS Research Conference in Toronto on “Peer Research Assistant”

You can view the poster presented at the 2010 AIDS Conference in Vienna here