Supporting Partnership Development and Community Engagement

Building capacity to expand community-academic partnerships at the Medical College of Wisconsin

Full Project Name:Funds to support 0.5 FTE Partnership Development and Community EngagementPrincipal Investigator:Syed M Ahmed, MD, MPH, DrPH, Family MedicineAward Amount:$848,184.00

Award Date

January2010

Project Duration:57 months

Project Description Narrative:

Partnerships among all members of communities and the public health system, including but not limited to community organizations, academics, health providers, consumers, public health professionals and policymakers, are essential to creating sustained improvements in health status. Built on the premise that we can accomplish more by working together, this award will support the Medical College of Wisconsin in recruiting a faculty director to advance understanding of, awareness of, and engagement in a community-academic partnership model of health improvement in order to promote collaboration, sharing of knowledge, and dissemination of new ideas and work between communty partners and academics and meet a mutual goal of improving the public's health.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned:

Established learning opportunities including workshops and conferences on aspects of community-academic partnerships that reached 1,081 MCW faculty, staff, and community members
Conducted a comprehensive sutdy of 100 previously funded projects, uncovering lessons learned by community-academic partnerships and disseminating findings through two separate events
Created an evaluation and reporting framework to be used by community-academic partnership projects
Provided consultation and mentoring to faculty members in community-engaged research
Increased the number of academic partners participating in community-led research projects by 33%
Supported the MCW Cancer Center in creating a Cancer Center Community Engagement Roadmap to inform opportunities to partner with the community