A panel of experts offered spirited definitions of community-based research and discussed its implications at the Annual Diversity Workshop on June 18 in the FXB Building.

The day-long workshop, "Community-based Research: Making It Work," was hosted by the Department of Biostatistics and was sponsored by the Initiative for Minority Student Development Grant through the National Institutes of Health. As part of the grant, six minority students have been invited to HSPH to conduct research projects with faculty members in several departments. The goal of the program, including the workshop, is to attract more minority students to HSPH and the public health field in general.

The workshop featured several lectures by public health experts from HSPH and elsewhere and ended with a panel discussion of "What Makes for Successful Community-based Research?" Louise Ryan, professor in the Department of Biostatistics, asked the panelists to explain what community-based research is.

Bill Jenkins, biostatistician/epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responded that a community can be defined by more than geography. People connected by a shared history and common interests are a community just as much as those who live in the same area, he said.

Jonathan Levy, assistant professor of environmental health and risk assessment in the Department of Environmental Health, agreed that a common cause or issue can define a community. He said the broadest definition of community can be among the most useful because it can take on any number of different forms.

Identifying the common interest that binds a community together is probably best done by the community itself and not by researchers, said Rosalind Wright, instructor in medicine, HMS.

Once research has been conducted, it is important that those results be shared with community members, said Tanya Sharpe, violence prevention coordinator/community health specialist at the Division of Public Health Practice.

But do the interventions end when researchers leave? Fred Li, professor of clinical cancer epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology, said that researchers must make scientists’ commitments clear to the community at the outset.

Ed Fisher, professor of psychology, medicine and pediatrics at Washington University, concluded that community-based research is an exercise in humility.

"None of us is going to save the world, but all of us can make a difference," he said.