about community track
Background & History
In 1991, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched the Community-Based Public Health Initiative (CBPHI), with the goal of developing partnerships between academic institutions, community-based organizations and local health departments. The Foundation’s hope was that models of these tripartite partnerships could demonstrate how academic programs in public health can be strengthened by partnering with community and practice in research and teaching, while at the same time improving the capacity of health departments and communities to address health issues of the communities they serve.
While CBPHI did develop successful partnership models and stimulated the continuous growth and development of community-academic partnerships, the experience of CBPHI also demonstrated a serious gap in academe. Developing and sustaining community-academic partnerships requires faculty with the competency to carry out community-based research and teaching, who understand determinants of community health, and who know how to build the capacity of communities, health-related agencies and academic centers to function as equal partners in community-based research, service and education. CBPHI demonstrated that there was a severe lack of faculty possessing these competencies, and that the pursuit of these skills by junior faculty often came at a cost of progress in achieving tenure and promotion.
In order to address this serious lack of faculty with community-related skills, the Foundation entered into discussion with the deans of several schools of public health that had participated in CBPHI. The result was the establishment of the Community Health Scholars Program in 1997, with the goal of developing and strengthening emerging faculty's competencies in community-based approaches to teaching service and research. An invitational, competitive process led to the designation of three training sites (the schools of public health at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina), a National Program Office at the University of Michigan, and the start of the first cohort in 1998.
Dr. Thomas Bruce, then program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the initial program officer guiding CBPHI, played the lead role at the Foundation in developing the new program and assisting its start-up and initial implementation. He was soon succeeded in the program officer role by Barbara Sabol, who provided continued support and guidance to the program, including the advocacy for funding to continue the program and extend the fellowship period from one to two years.
As of 2007, CHSP has provided fellowships to over 52 scholars and has had significant impact on the academic institutions where they trained and began their post-CHSP careers, as well as on the community-based organizations where they engaged in collaborative research. CHSP also served as the catalyst for the development and continued growth of the Community-Based Public Health Caucus at the American Public Health Association (APHA), now numbering more than 300 members, with an active program of publications and presentations, policy advocacy, and promotion of community representation within APHA.
At the start of its 8th cohort of scholars, the final cohort supported by Kellogg funding, a new program was established. This new and enhanced post-doctoral program combines two prior highly successful Kellogg-funded programs: Community Health Scholars Program (CHSP) and Scholars in Health Disparities Program (SHDP). These two antecedent programs combined their proven strengths and are partnering with allies in policy and practice organizations across the country to build a movement for the elimination of health disparities and the securing of equal access to the conditions and services essential for the achievement of healthy communities. Leadership of both programs are working with Dr. Albert Yee, current Kellogg program officer to strengthen the combined program by enhancing community partnership approaches and skills in translating research across both program tracks.
The Kellogg Health Scholars Program is based upon the premise that significant impact in reducing and eliminating health disparities can be achieved by developing a growing cadre of leadership who have mastered the skills of connecting knowledge based upon research, coupled with the power and insight of communities experiencing health disparities, and applying this knowledge to the development of effective policies to eliminate health disparities. The program offers two tracks. The Community track, based upon the Community Health Scholars Program, highlights community-based participatory research and relationships between academe, community and public health practice. The Multidisciplinary track, based upon the Scholars in Health Disparities Program, highlights a multi-disciplinary approach to studying the social determinants of health disparities. Combining the strengths of both antecedent programs, KHSP connects the skills of academic excellence, community partnering, and policy development in a way that no other postdoctoral program has attempted, and focuses the Program on promising future leaders most of whom come from underrepresented minority populations. Other health-related fellowship programs focus on either one or, at most, two of these three competencies, and most focus almost entirely on non-minority Scholars. Only KHSP combines all three competencies applying them to a significantly diverse group of Scholars.
References:
Smith, Gloria R. and Randolph-Back, Kay, "Foundation Perspective on the Community-Based Public Health Initiative", in Community-Based Public Health: A Partnership Model, Bruce, Thomas A. and Uranga McKane, Steven, eds.. (American Public Health Association, 2000).
Stories of Impact, Community Health Scholars Program (University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2002).
Building the Movement for Community/Academic Partnership, Community Health Scholars Program (University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2005).
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