Academic and Community Partnerships for CBPR Research on Social Media and Digital Communication

William C. Livingood Jr., Ph.D. - This academic - community partnership conference series grant proposal describes how a major academic health center (University of Florida/UF Health Jacksonville) will partner with a key community organization (Florida Department of Health in Duval) to utilize principles of community based participatory research (CBPR) to address major health disparity issues. Our initial focus on health disparity reduction will be on the use of techniques of outreach and information dissemination that are most effective with minority adolescents and young adults related to obesity in those populations.

Two groups of specific aims organized around two interrelated major goals:

• The development and implementation of a CBPR processes and infrastructure focused on health disparities in our community
• The use of community meetings, workshops, symposia and outreach to educate and involve the community in effective approaches for reducing health disparities associated with obesity in adolescent and young adults or precipitated by their lifestyles and behaviors

Team Based Care/Practice Transformation Research

Several studies have examined practice transformation initiatives in the primary care setting including a project called “Practice Transformation Improving Quality Using a Team Based Approach.” This study uses AHRQ’s TeamSTEPPS program to improve team based care in six of the primary care practices in the UF Jacksonville Primary Care Network. It involves training sessions that focus on the 4 core competency areas of TeamSTEPPS (team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, mutual support and communication) and on the basic concepts of team-based care in a patient centered medical home (PCMH) model. The study assesses the impact of the implementation of the TeamSTEPPS program on employee satisfaction and improved teamwork as well as the impact on the management of chronic care patients, especially those with diabetes.