WRITING AN ACTION RESEARCH DISSERTATION PART TWOINTRODU.docx

WRITING AN ACTION RESEARCH DISSERTATION: PART
TWO
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the second part of our two-part media presentation.
In the first part, we talked about key tools for
successful academic writing and gave an example of how these
tools can make your dissertation writing
process faster and help you create a stronger dissertation
document. This second part of our two-part media
presentation applies those key tools to the specific challenges of
writing an action research dissertation.
PROCESS OF WRITING
The process of writing the research dissertation involves finding
ways to help your readers understand both the
philosophy of research underlying the study and the methods
employed in the study.
ACTION RESEARCH ROLES
It will be important to help your readers to understand the roles
of the Principal Investigator and the participants
in your Action Research study. Rather than the "all-knowing"
researcher who controls conditions and conducts
an experiment on or to someone or something else, Action
Research assumes that the participants themselves
have insight and an important perspective and role.
ACTION RESEARCH METHODS
As a writer, you will want to help your reader understand that
this idea of democratizing the research process
applies regardless of the research methodology used. Action

Research involves methods that would be
familiar in both qualitative and quantitative types of research,
and it would be very common to find mixed
methods in a particular study. Regardless of the methodology
used, the participants can and will play an active
role at each step of the research process.
Help your readers to understand that the participants are active
in the research process of planning, deciding,
and helping to shape the implementation of the study protocol
and analysis of the findings. Also, help your
readers to understand that findings are interpreted or understood
in part based on "meaningfulness" to the
participants engaged in the work.
An example might be a study on abusive behavior in hospitals
among nursing and other staff. Members of the
study team could help refine the survey instruments, later take
the survey themselves as part of the participant
pool, and help to interpret the findings.
IMPLICATIONS FOR WRITING...
In the next few minutes, we will discuss four elements of
writing the action research dissertation. You will want
your dissertation to clearly explain the following:
1. How the research questions that you asked led you to decide
to use action research.
2. How the research questions that you asked informed they way
in which you organized and presented
your discussion of prior research.
3. How you balanced the two goals of being of service and
avoiding risk to participants within the action

research paradigm.
4. The reporting of outcomes and analysis of outcomes.
ACTION RESEARCH DISSERTATIONS
Action Research dissertations are, by their nature, research
studies in which the roles of the Principal
Investigator and the Participants are key. Rather than the "all-
knowing" researcher who controls conditions and
conducts an experiment on or to someone or something else,
this assumes that the participants themselves
have insight and an important perspective and role. Action
Research studies privilege the process of reflection.
They seek to be of service.
Most dissertations, of any sort, are concerned with exploring the
relationship between "x" and "y." We
sometimes see dissertations that present research questions in
two tiers.
THIS DISSERTATION WILL EXPLORE...
The top tier says something such as, "This dissertation will
explore the relationship between x and y." Then the
second tier says something such as, "This dissertation will
explore this relationship by examining the following
three (or two or one or four) specific research questions."
In many cases, the same top-tier question could lead to a variety
of different dissertation studies. The lower-tier
question or questions, though, will be different for quantitative
studies, in which we expect to see yes/no
questions, and qualitative studies, in which we expect to see
"how" questions rather than "yes/no" ones. With
Action Research studies, either is possible. In addition, the
research questions provide the answer to the
question, "Why did you choose Action Research?" When we

choose Action Research, we do so because it
provides the best way to answer the questions that we've asked.
Remember that the research questions always drive the choice
of methodology.
DECISION TO USE ACTION RESEARCH
As you read examples of Action Research in the journals and
research reports from the links following this
presentation, look particularly at the research questions being
asked. In each case, ask yourself how the
questions being asked lead to the selection of research methods
and, within those, specific activities.
ORGANIZATION OF YOUR DISCUSSION
The research questions also drive your review of literature. A
trick of the trade is to think of your review of
literature as focusing on your research topic and being made up
of several sub-topics. Review each of those
topics as separate, but related, literature reviews.
SUGGESTION
Here is a suggestion. After you have agreed with your mentor
on your research question but before you begin
your full review of literature, you may want to suggest a list of
literature review sub-topics to your mentor. Your
mentor may agree with your topics, combine some of your sub-
topics, or suggest new sub-topics. If you and
your mentor have an initial agreement on the sub-topics you
will use in your literature review before you begin,
you can expect to cut significant time and frustration from your
dissertation writing process.
Remember that, as a writer of an Action Research Dissertation,

you will organize and write your literature
review to reflect the research questions that led you to choose
an Action Research Methodology. There are
many ways to organize your review of literature. The worst way
is usually chronological. You will end up with
some chronological ordering organically, in a natural way, but
it's a stronger choice to conceptualize the
organization of your review of literature by considering ideas.
Let the organization of your review of literature
reflect the substance of the study you plan to conduct.
NOTICE PRIOR RESEARCH
As you read examples of Action Research in the journals and
research reports from the links following this
presentation, notice how the discussion of prior research is
organized and presented. Consider whether the
organizational structure that the writer used reflects the
research questions and whether it works well in helping
you, as a reader, follow what is being presented.
ENGAGING IN ACTION RESEARCH
By engaging in Action Research, you accept both the
opportunity to be of service and the challenge of
responsible involvement in a social research process.
RISK AND SERVICE
As you read the journal articles and research reports provided in
the links at the end of this presentation, be
aware of the ways in which the studies explain the balance of
service and risk that Action Research involves.
As you plan your own dissertation research, draw on your
mentor, Capella's Institutional Review Board, and
other resources to be sure that your study will, in the end,
provide increased understanding in the ways that
you intend.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS
Dissertations normally have a chapter devoted to reporting the
results of the research and another chapter
discussing those results.
UNDERSTANDING THE WRITING PROCESS
Understanding the differences between these two chapters can
cut significant amounts of time from your
writing process and result in a superior dissertation. With a
quantitative dissertation, the chapter reporting
results may be comparatively easy to write, since it may focus
on presenting numerical outcomes and the
results of statistical tests. On the other hand, learners who write
qualitative dissertations or mixed methods
dissertations containing qualitative methods sometimes struggle
because with qualitative methodologies it may
not be clear what should go into the chapter reporting the
results, and what should go into the chapter
analyzing those results. A trick of the trade is to begin
discussing this early on in the dissertation process with
your mentor. If you have parameters in mind as you shape and
conduct the study, writing these chapters may
go more smoothly.
This is true for journal articles and research reports as well as
for dissertations.
USING LANGUAGE TO SHOW DISTINCTION
As you read examples of Action Research journal articles and
research reports, consider how easy or difficult
you find it to distinguish between sections that report study
outcomes and sections that discuss and analyze
those outcomes. Be aware of whether and how the writer uses
language to help you, as the reader, make that

distinction. If you are reading a study that employs mixed
methods, be aware of how the reporting and
discussion of the multiple methodologies are organized and
presented. Think about elements of the journal
article or research report that makes it easier or more difficult
for you, as the reader, to follow the writer's
presentation.
CONCLUSION
This concludes the media presentation on writing the Action
Research Dissertation.
We have discussed what you should look for while reading
examples of Action Research in the journals and
research reports from the links following this presentation.
Those four elements include:
1. How the research questions asked led to the decision to use
action research.
2. How the discussion of prior research is organized and
presented.
3. How the study being reported balances service and risk
within the Action Research paradigm.
4. How the writer separates reporting of outcomes and analysis
of outcomes including how the writer uses
language to show the distinction.
Now, please look at the links to sources of academic writing
related to action research. These links include
examples of (1) journals carried in the Capella library, and (2)
university centers conducting and reporting
Action Research. The links to the academic writing tools that
were introduced in the first part of this
presentation such as Reverse Outlining, the MEAL Plan, and the
Writing Feedback Tool are repeated here so

you will be able to use them as you consider the material.
When you are ready, engage your fellow learners by responding
to the discussion question in the courseroom.
Thank you for listening.
SCREEN 18
Overview of the Writing Center:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/XX7010/WritingCenterO
verview/wrapper.asp
Academic Integrity:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/AcademicInte
grity/animation_wrapper.asp
Smarthinking:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/Smarthinking/
smarthinking_wrapper.asp
Peer Review:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/PeerReview/a
nimation_wrapper.asp
SCREEN 19
Journals in the Capella library that publish action research
articles:
• Action Research International
• Journal of Action Research
SCREEN 20
University research centers conducting and reporting action
research:

Pepperdine University: Center for Collaborative Action
Research
http://cadres.pepperdine.edu/ccar/
http://cadres.pepperdine.edu/ccar/define.html
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: East St. Louis
Action Research Project
http://eslarp.illinois.edu/
http://eslarp.illinois.edu/view/about.aspx
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
WRITING AN ACTION RESEARCH DISSERTATION: PART
ONE
INTRODUCTION
Writing an action research dissertation may seem a formidable
task. However, action research offers exciting
prospects for expanding our understanding of the world around
us and rich opportunities to be of service as
academics and as professionals.
Any well-written dissertation will have much in common with
other well-written pieces of academic writing
including journal articles and research reports.
In Part One of this presentation, we'll talk about some factors
related to success as an academic writer, and
then in Part Two we'll apply what we've discussed to the task of
At the end of the first presentation, you'll be invited to explore

links to academic writing tools. At the end of the
second presentation, you'll be invited to explore links to
academic journals that publish action research studies
and university centers that conduct and share the results of
action research. When you've explored those links,
please share your ideas with your colleagues by responding to
the discussion question in your courseroom.
ACADEMIC WRITING
First, let's talk about academic writing generally.
Different kinds of writing are done differently and, when they're
completed, have different characteristics.For
example, writers of fiction or marketing materials are
sometimes advised to, "Write the way we talk." However,
that isn't good advice for academic writing.
LEVEL OF REDUNDANCY
For one thing, spoken language contains a lot of redundancy,
since the listener has to remember everything
that has been said. That isn't the case with writing, of course,
and academic writing has very little redundancy.
As a result, it can seem to be particularly dense.
ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS
Another example is that we tend to use a lot of adjectives and
adverbs when we talk, but strong academic
writing usually does not use a lot of them. A reason is that
adjectives and adverbs tend to be imprecise. Words
such as "big," "old," "important" and so forth are vague. You
will be strongest when you are most precise.
THIS DISSERTATION
A third example is that academic writers structure their

sentences differently from the way they structure their
sentences when they speak. Research shows when we speak we
tend to build our sentences out of a lot of
pairs of subjects and verbs — that is, our sentences tend to have
a lot of clauses. For example, someone
might say "I told him that Jane thought that he needed a car."
SPEECH
That sentence contains three clauses. The first clause has "I" as
the subject and "told" as the verb, the second
clause has "Jane" as the subject and "thought" as the verb, and
the third clause has "he" as the subject and
"needed" as the verb.
ACADEMIC WRITING
Experienced academic writers rarely write sentences that string
together a sequence of subjects and verbs in
that way. Instead, they tend to create sentences that have one
subject and one verb, with a lot of phrases
related to the subject and verb. "Poverty in the home, regardless
of the level of education of the parents,
causes poor performance in middle school and increased
dropout rates over time." The first sentence, "I told
him that Jane thought that he needed a car," is only 11 words
long but has three pairs of subjects and verbs.
The second sentence, "Poverty in the home, regardless of the
level of education of the parents, causes poor
performance in middle school and increased dropout rates over
time," is much longer, with 25 words, but has
only one subject and verb.
You don't have to be an expert in grammar to succeed as an
academic writer. In fact, probably very few, if any,
academic writers would be aware that they were making this
shift in sentence structure. However, this example
illustrates that in learning to be an academic writer, you are

learning to write in a new register that differs from
the ways in which you may be used to using language. One way
to shepherd yourself into the kinds of
sentences and overall style used in your specific academic area
is to read high-quality pieces of academic
writing in your area and pay attention to the ways in which
language is used. Over time, you'll become used to
these specific uses of language.
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
All of us have strengths and weaknesses, and in academic
writing, as in other areas of life, our strengths and
weaknesses will end up to be systematic. This is a reason that if
a teacher goes through your paper and does
line-by-line editing, marking all of your mistakes, research does
not show that this will necessarily lead to
learning. What most often happens in those cases is that
learners don't take time to go through all of those
edits. Instead, being normal people, we tend to just go on to the
next assignment.
On the other hand, if a teacher identifies categories of your
strengths and weaknesses, that empowers you
going forward because then you will be able to work to improve
in your weak areas, and protect your areas of
strength. Both of these are important, because as you make
changes to improve your weaknesses, you may
accidentally lose some of your strengths without knowing it.
Knowing what your strengths are will help you to
protect them. The links provided to you at the end of this
presentation will give you the tools and skills you
need to accomplish this.
WRITING FEEDBACK

As a start, you'll be introduced to Capella's Personal Writing
Assessment Tool and Writing Feedback Tool.
MEAL PLAN
You'll also learn about two Writing Program resources that are
particularly useful in dissertation writing:
Reverse Outlining and the MEAL PLAN.
Let me say a word about Reverse Outlining. This simply means
that you write a draft and then outline what
you've written. This isn't as easy as it sounds, because you have
to outline what you actually wrote, not what
you wished you had written. As soon as you begin to reverse
outline something you've written, you will trick
your mind into seeing your writing differently, and your mind
will say, "Oh, I thought I had three major divisions
but I only have two," or, "I have three divisions but I have 27
pages in the first one and only 2 pages in the
second one."
This fact makes Reverse Outlining the best tool to use if your
dissertation committee asks you to expand your
review of literature, which sometimes happens. If you just look
over your review of literature and say, "Oh, ok, I
can write more about these two areas," you'll probably pick the
two areas you already wrote too much about
because you'll pick the areas you liked best or found easiest to
research. If you use the Reverse Outlining
process, you'll create a more balanced review of literature and
save yourself a lot of revision time and
frustration.
CONCLUSION
Actually, this provides a good transition into the second part of
this presentation, which is applying best
practices of academic writing to the specific challenges of

Here are the links to key academic writing resources for you to
reflect on as you watch the second media
presentation:
Overview of the Writing Center:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/XX7010/WritingCenterO
verview/wrapper.asp
Academic Integrity:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/AcademicInte
grity/animation_wrapper.asp
Smarthinking:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/Smarthinking/
smarthinking_wrapper.asp
Peer Review:
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/DrPH8005/PeerReview/a
nimation_wrapper.asp
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Community-Based Participatory Research and Policy Advocacy
to Reduce Diesel Exposure in West Oakland, California
Priscilla A. Gonzalez, MPH, Meredith Minkler, DrPH, MPH,
Analilia P. Garcia, MPH, Margaret Gordon, Catalina Garzón,
MCP, Meena Palaniappan, MSc,
Swati Prakash, MS, and Brian Beveridge
We conducted a multimethod case study analysis of a
community-based

participatory research partnership in West Oakland, California,
and its efforts to
study and address the neighborhood’s disproportionate exposure
to diesel air
pollution. We employed 10 interviews with partners and
policymakers, partici-
pant observation, and a review of documents. Results of the
partnership’s truck
count and truck idling studies suggested substantial exposure to
diesel pollution
and were used by the partners and their allies to make the case
for a truck route
ordinance. Despite weak enforcement, the partnership’s
increased political
visibility helped change the policy environment, with the
community partner
now heavily engaged in environmental decision-making on the
local and
regional levels. Finally, we discussed implications for research,
policy, and
practice. (Am J Public Health. 2011;101:S166–S175.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2010.
196204)

Located on the San Francisco Bay, and
bounded by freeways, West Oakland is a small
but vibrant community of predominately low-
income African American and Latino resi-
dents. Home to nearly 22 000 people in 10
distinct neighborhoods, the community also
contains thousands of moving and stationary
sources of diesel pollution.1 From the buses
and trucks on surrounding freeways, to the
container trucks moving through neighbor-
hoods as they take goods to and from the Port
of Oakland and a major US Post Office distri-
bution center, residents have long experi-
enced disproportionate exposure to diesel
exhaust and traffic-related air pollutants. Al-
though such exposures are known to ad-
versely affect cardiovascular health outcomes,
including premature mortality,2---4 of greatest
concern to West Oakland residents is the role of
these pollutants in exacerbating asthma and
related respiratory conditions in children and
their families. Recent prospective studies have
shown a positive relationship between traffic-
related air pollution and the onset of asthma in
children,5 as well as adverse effects of such
exposure on the growth of lung functioning in
children aged 10---18 years.6 In a nested case---
control study in British Columbia, Canada,
elevated exposure to traffic-related air pollutants,
such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and
black carbon, in utero or in infancy was also
recently found to be associated with higher risk
of asthma in children under age 5.7
In many low income urban neighborhoods,

and particularly communities such as West
Oakland with major ‘‘goods movement’’ activity
related to international trade, a larger than
normal percentage of traffic consists of diesel
trucks,8 including those moving containers.9 The
emissions from diesel exhaust are a combination
of gases and particles, including a high number
of ultrafine particles shown to be especially
hazardous because they can escape many of
the body’s defenses, allowing them to enter the
lungs and the systemic circulation.10 Although
automobile emissions also include ultrafine par-
ticulate matter, for residents of West Oakland,
who see relatively little car traffic in the neigh-
borhood itself but regularly find diesel exhaust
soot on their window sills and heating vents
from the high volume of truck traffic, diesel air
pollution is of far greater local concern.
In West Oakland, as in a growing number of
low income communities disproportionately
impacted by environmental hazards, commu-
nity-based participatory research (CBPR) has
been used by local residents, in partnership
with outside researchers, to help study and
address neighborhood challenges, while build-
ing local capacity.11---19 Green et al20 defined
CBPR as ‘‘systematic inquiry, with the participa-
tion of those affected by the issue being studied,
for the purposes of education and taking action
or effecting change.’’ Among the core principles
of this approach to research are that it recognizes
community as a unit of identity; it entails an
empowering, colearning process that ‘‘equitably’’
involves all partners; and it includes systems

development and increases local problem-solving
ability. It also achieves a balance of research and
action, and ‘‘involves a long term process and
a commitment to sustainability.’’21 Finally, CBPR
pays serious attention to issues of research rigor
and validity. However, it also ‘‘broadens the
bandwidth of validity’’22 to ask whether the
research question is ‘‘valid,’’ in the sense of
coming from or being meaningful to the involved
community. With its commitment to action as
part of the research process itself, CBPR has
increasingly been utilized by community---aca-
demic partnerships interested in using their
research findings, together with advocacy and
organizing, to help move policy that may
improve conditions and environments in
which people can be healthy.17,19
Our primary research goal was to analyze
a CBPR partnership between a community-
led and -based organization, the West Oak-
land Environmental Indicators Project
(WOEIP), and its academically trained re-
search partners at the Pacific Institute in
Oakland, California. We examined the pro-
cesses by which community and academically
trained research partners collaborated to
study a community-identified issue (i.e., die-
sel traffic in West Oakland23) and then
worked with other stakeholders to use the
findings and residents’ experience to advocate
for policy change.
FRAMING HEALTH MATTERS
S166 | Framing Health Matters | Peer Reviewed | Gonzalez et al.

American Journal of Public Health | Supplement 1, 2011, Vol
101, No. S1
METHODS
The collaboration between community
members and partners at WOEIP and their
research collaborators at the Pacific Institute
was 1 of 36 current or recent policy-focused
CBPR partnerships in California that our re-
search team at the University of California,
Berkeley and PolicyLink, Inc., identified in
2008 as appearing to have played a role in
contributing to policy level change. With
funding from The California Endowment, we
designed a study to explore CBPR as a strategy
for linking place-based work and policy toward
building healthier communities. As part of
this broader study, and in consultation with an
advisory committee, we selected for in-depth
analysis 6 of the 36 partnerships that met the
following criteria: (1) demonstrated the CBPR
core principles previously noted,21,22,24 (2)
substantially contributed to either a specific pol-
icy change or a change in the policy environ-
ment, and (3) helped capture the diverse range of
such projects in the state. A 28 item in-depth,
semistructured interview schedule was devel-
oped for administration to key community and
academic partners, along with a shorter phone
interview guide for relevant policymakers at each
site. The on-site interviews (range, 60---90 min-
utes) included questions designed to explicate
partnership genesis and evolution; research aims,

methods, and findings; policy goals, steps, and
activities; success factors and barriers; and per-
ceived contributions to helping change a specific
policy or the broader policy environment.
As 1 of the 6 partnerships that comprised the
final sample, WOEIP and the Pacific Institute
were visited 4 times by members of the re-
search team who conducted 7 key source
interviews, 3 phone interviews with local policy
makers, observed a WOEIP training for local
residents, and analyzed relevant internal doc-
uments and media coverage. Audiotapes of the
7 interviews were transcribed and coded in-
dependently by 3 research team members
using a 16-item coding template, with subcodes
whose code categories were related to each
major domain of interest (e.g., partnership
creation and evolution; partner involvement in
conducting the research; policy goals, stages,
activities, and outcomes; facilitating factors and
obstacles faced; and sustainability indicators).
We conducted interrater reliability checks,
reconciling discrepancies. Next, we employed
the qualitative software package, ATLAS.ti,
version 5.5 (Atlas.ti GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Version 5.5) to group all key domains by site
and generate reports, facilitating an additional
layer of coding following a similar technique.
Finally, we shared preliminary case study re-
ports based on the reconciled findings with
community partners at WOEIP and their col-
laborators at the Pacific Institute for member
checking as an added means of ensuring the
accuracy of data interpretation. In the spirit of

CBPR, both community and academically
trained researchers in the WOEIP partnership
participated in coauthoring this paper.
RESULTS
The West Oakland EIP began in 2000 as
a project partnership between a nonprofit
research organization, the Pacific Institute, and
the 7th Street-McClymonds Neighborhood
Improvement Initiative. This early collaboration
undertook research, in which ‘‘residents se-
lected the indicators they wanted to track;
collected, analyzed, and reported on selected
indicators, and supported the continued use of
this data to advocate for positive change in
West Oakland.’’23 A Task Force of 16 residents
identified 17 key indicators (e.g., toxic exposure,
illegal dumping, and asthma rates), each related
to a topic of major concern in the neighborhood
(e.g., air quality and health, physical environ-
ment, and transportation). The academic partner
then collected and examined both survey data
collection and secondary data on the municipal
and state levels, and drew comparisons between
indicator data for West Oakland and that for the
city and state as a whole. Released in 2002,
the West Oakland EIP report, Neighborhood
Knowledge for Change,23 which summarized
study findings and forwarded recommendations,
was cited in the local media, with some of its
findings (e.g., children younger than 15 years in
West Oakland had asthma rates 7 times the
state’s average) drawing particular attention. This
visibility, together with the high quality of the
research, contributed to WOEIP’s spinning off to

become a community-led organization in its own
right and incorporating as a nonprofit in 2004.
The processes and outcomes of the Neigh-
borhood Knowledge for Change project laid the
groundwork for a true CBPR partnership
between community members engaged with
the newly formed community organization,
WOEIP, and the Community Strategies pro-
gram of the Pacific Institute to study and
address a key concern raised in the original
study but for which insufficient data existed:
the high volume of diesel truck traffic in West
Oakland.23
Although we focus here primarily on 2 of
the resultant CBPR studies (the truck count
and truck idling studies) and subsequent
policy work to secure a truck route ordinance,
these were part of a range of intersecting
efforts to study and address disproportion-
ate exposures and environmental injustice,
and in the words of a partner, to increase
‘‘democratic community participation in
decision making in West Oakland.’’
Research Design, Methods, and
Participant Roles
The initial idea for conducting the truck
count and truck idling studies emerged from
initial community meetings held as part
of the Neighborhood Knowledge for Change
project. When residents and staff realized

there were insufficient data to allow the in-
clusion of indicators related to diesel truck
traffic in the original study, they left this as 1 of
several ‘‘indicators not included’’ in the report,
‘‘as a placeholder’’ for subsequent study.
WOEIP and their Pacific Institute research
partners then returned to this issue to develop
and conduct studies to better understand
the residents’ key concern. Although commu-
nity residents played important roles in the
planning and implementation of the truck
count and idling studies, this research was
preceded by considerable background study
by the Pacific Institute partners, including
a review of existing research to determine
what methods had already been employed for
estimating diesel sources. The Pacific Institute
also conducted secondary data analysis to
estimate diesel pollution in West Oakland
and its potential sources, which provided
important background and context for the
truck count and truck idling studies that
followed.
Building on this preliminary work, the
WOEIP partnership and the Pacific Institute
jointly designed and conducted the truck count
and idling studies, together with a third study of
Supplement 1, 2011, Vol 101, No. S1 | American Journal of
Public Health Gonzalez et al. | Peer Reviewed | Framing Health
Matters | S167

indoor air quality (not detailed here because
of small sample size), with funding from the
federal Environmental Protection Agency and
the California Department of Health Services.
One partner described these studies as ‘‘re-
search with a purpose,’’ with the 2 studies we
explored designed to ‘‘better understand truck
patterns and behaviors’’ so that the partnership
could identify strategies to reduce pollution
and other impacts of the heavy truck presence
in this community.1
To provide additional background for the
work, the Pacific Institute partners conducted
an in-house diesel inventory and helped de-
velop a request for application for firms in-
terested in providing technical assistance with
the truck count and truck idling studies. Com-
munity members played a key role in inter-
viewing 2 potential subcontractors, and the
transportation technologies consulting firm
TIAX, Cupertino, California, was unanimously
chosen through this process. TIAX trained 10
community residents and WOEIP staff while
also learning about the community’s lay
knowledge to enrich the research. TIAX and
the community residents worked together, for
example, to identify key street intersections at
which the studies should take place. After some
background study, TIAX generated a potential
list, with community residents and WOEIP
staff then using their ‘‘in the trenches’’ knowl-
edge to add additional potential locations and
actively participate in selecting final locations.
These included intersections with high truck

traffic and/or those where large (4.5 ton) trucks
were prohibited.25 TIAX then trained the resi-
dents as truck observers. After learning to iden-
tify different types of trucks (e.g., container and
noncontainer trucks, 2- and 3-axle trucks), the
observers counted the number and types of
trucks, and which direction they were traveling,
on 5 neighborhood streets over 3 days. Similarly,
they observed and tracked truck idling at the
Port of Oakland for 2 different 24-hour pe-
riods.25 TIAX also conducted informal inter-
views with truckers from an independent truck-
ing company and community members to gather
their opinions on and experiences with truck
traffic.
Throughout these studies, researchers at the
Pacific Institute ‘‘were behind the scenes as
much as possible.’’ Community residents and
WOEIP staff worked on data collection, with
guidance from TIAX, and subsequently
worked with the Pacific Institute on data
analysis. Although engaging in rigorous re-
search was an exciting and critical part of the
work, both community and academically
trained partners noted that there were initial
tensions in ‘‘not having residents at the same
technical level as the Pacific Institute.’’ As
a community member commented, this
resulted in ‘‘a certain amount of pushback,’’
with residents wanting ‘‘a bigger role in de-
signing and conducting the studies and con-
cerned about ‘‘having PhDs just come and do
the research and then leave.’’ However, trans-
parency on both sides allowed communication

to flow and partners to work out their differ-
ences. In the words of another WOEIP leader
and community resident, ‘‘We’ve always been
able to stop a meeting and find the common
ground, come to an agreement and resolve the
skills difference, and most times after it was
explained, we could move on.’’ In this case, the
community learned to appreciate through di-
alogue that they could not ‘‘learn in a week’’
what outside researchers had spent years
learning, yet could still play a vital (and deeply
appreciated) part in the research, partially
based on their wealth of lay knowledge of the
location of heavily trafficked intersections.
WOEIP Study Findings
The truck count study revealed that 6300
truck trips occurred daily through West Oak-
land, some in areas prohibited to trucks.27
Trucks traveled through local neighborhoods to
find truck services, such as fuel, truck repair,
food, and overnight parking. The trained resident
observers also found that approximately 40 large
trucks per day drove on streets prohibited for
trucks over 4.5 tons.1,25
Findings from the truck idling study were
similarly striking: community partner ob-
servers found that trucks were idling outside
the Port of Oakland terminal gates an estimated
combined 280 truck-hours per day––the
equivalent of nearly 12 trucks idling for 24
hours a day. They further found that most of
the idling trucks were doing so inside the

terminal gates where data collection was pre-
cluded. By conservative estimate, however,
each truck appeared to be spending about 1.5
hours per trip idling or moving at a very slow
pace for container pick up or delivery.1 The
combined results of these studies revealed that
approximately 64 lbs/day of diesel particulate
matter emissions were generated from truck
traffic and truck idling.25
Although these studies were based on small
samples, the partners extrapolated from their
findings that West Oakland might be exposed
to ‘‘90 times more diesel particulates per
square mile per year than the state of Califor-
nia.’’1 They further suggested that this figure
could translate into an increased risk of 1
additional case of cancer per 1000 residents over
a lifetime.1 These findings, moreover, were given
additional weight by a third, albeit very small
CBPR study on indoor air quality (not described)
suggesting that some West Oakland residents
were likely being exposed to almost 5 times more
diesel particulates than residents in other parts of
the city.1
From Research to Action
As Bardach,26 Kingdon,27 and others28 have
suggested, although the policy making process
often is messy and circuitous, several key steps
and activities typically are involved, including
problem identification, creating awareness, get-
ting on the agenda, constructing policy alterna-
tives, deciding on a policy to pursue, and policy

enactment and implementation. For CBPR prac-
titioners interested in helping effect policy level
change, relevant research findings, education
and policy advocacy frequently are used in
conjunction with these steps or activities.28
Building on earlier work that demonstrated
very high youth asthma rates and diesel truck
traffic as a top neighborhood concern,23 the
WOEIP partnership used findings from its
recent truck count and truck idling studies
to further define the problem and create
awareness, in part by gaining the buy-in of
a growing number of stakeholders. After the
partnership and a handful of community
members crafted initial recommendations
based on the study findings, for example, the
partners met independently with local orga-
nizations, businesses, truckers, and relevant
government entities (e.g., the Port Commis-
sion, Department of Public Works, and the
Police Department) to elicit their feedback.
This inclusive strategy was widely credited to
the former director of the Pacific Institute’s
Community Strategies program. In the words
of a EIP community resident and leader:
101, No. S1
I don’t think I was ever in a meeting with [her]

when she didn’t say, ‘‘who else do we need to
have at the meeting?’’ She was never willing to
rush to judgment . . . there was always the
potential that you would get a better perspective
if you got a few more people to the table.
Involving the truckers was not always easy
for WOEIP, one of whose leaders noted that:
In the beginning, this was a tension, because we
did not have a good relationship with truckers. I
was very adamant dealing with [them], but that
was the beginning of my education.
She went on to add that over the course of
this and subsequent meetings, ‘‘we began to
understand the needs of truckers, the labor
piece, and began forming our relationship with
[them]. We still have this relationship.’’
The truckers and other stakeholders were
also invited to a larger half day release event
and community workshop where the WOEIP
and Pacific Institute presented the study
results and initial recommendations, and re-
ceived feedback,. Additional community
members were then trained to conduct door-
to-door outreach and advertise a follow-up
meeting with WOEIP where residents could
further discuss and prioritize the recommen-
dations. The close to 3 dozen residents who
attended this release event also shared their
experience in relation to diesel exposures and
truck traffic in their community. However, as a
Pacific Institute partner commented, the other
groups present at this meeting (e.g., truckers

and the Port Commission) felt buy-in because
their ideas, expressed earlier in the more in-
dividualized stakeholder group meetings, were
represented along with those of community
members. Further, when truckers heard resi-
dents’ stories of how diesel exposure was af-
fecting their children and grandchildren, they
expressed more understanding of the com-
munity’s concerns about their heavy presence
in the neighborhood. Similarly, when commu-
nity members learned about the truckers’ expe-
riences and hardships (typically as immigrants of
quite modest means), they began forming better
relationships and worked to find common
ground that would be mutually beneficial.
The follow-up community workshop was
attended primarily by 20---25 residents. Although
it did not involve a formal process of weighing
a range of policy alternatives, this interactive
session was described by a community partner as
leading to ‘‘a smaller set of solutions.’’ Resident
‘‘voting’’ through dots on a collective list of
finalized recommendations clarified their
overwhelming priority: designating a truck
route that would prevent trucks from traveling
through West Oakland neighborhoods. Resi-
dents further emphasized their desires for
community participation in the process of de-
termining what an alternate truck route would
look like, and ensuring that report findings
were taken seriously. Their final 13 recom-
mendations were highlighted, along with the
study findings, in the partnership’s report,
Clearing the Air: Reducing Diesel Pollution in

West Oakland released in November 2003,
and an accompanying press release, ‘‘West
Oakland residents choking on diesel,’’ which
emphasized, in particular, residents’ desire for
a designated truck route.3
Policy Action Strategies and Approaches
The EIP partnership showed considerable
policy acumen in its efforts to get the truck
route proposal on the agenda of policy
makers. Although safety and health
concerns were the initial catalyst for the truck
count and truck idling studies, for example,
when moving into the policy advocacy
phase of the work, the partnership was
strategic in framing their findings and their
policy objective even more explicitly in
terms of health. As a community partner
noted,
We could have said the truck route was about
traffic. We could have said it was about walk-
ability in the neighborhood. We could have said
it was about a whole lot of things [but] we said it
was about health. And so it was really grounded
in something no one could really argue with,
especially if they were local.
In underscoring the ‘‘health angle,’’ the
partnership also provided important backing
for their key policy ally: a city councilwoman
with strong roots in West Oakland. In her
words:
State law, city law looks at commerce [but] we

wanted to look at health issues---they were not
part of agenda. There was community advocacy
[framing the problem as a health issue]; com-
munity voice added to mine.
The partnership also worked with commu-
nity members to conduct a power analysis to
identify decision makers who could bring
policy change and bridge gaps with the city. A
strategic method in policy advocacy, power
analysis (or power mapping) helped identify,
for a given policy objective, targets with de-
cision-making power on the issue, as well as
potential allies, opponents, and other stake-
holders and their relative strength and de-
grees of overlap or independence.29 Such an
analysis helped partners create a strategic plan of
action to neutralize or win over opponents,
mobilized constituents, and brought appropriate
arguments and advocacy methods to bear on
a target or group of targets.28 In West Oakland,
where many key players had already been
identified, the power analysis process high-
lighted the importance of the Port as a key
decision maker, and of the district’s local city
councilmember as a potent ally. However,
it also shone a spotlight on West Oakland
businesses as an under appreciated group that
would be impacted by the proposed new truck
route and that they needed to be included
in subsequent planning.
Policy makers frequently note the impor-
tance of being presented not simply with
problems, but also with solutions––ideally so-

lutions that have ‘‘buy in’’ from multiple stake-
holders. The WOEIP partnership was strategic
in creating a truck route committee that met
monthly from October 2004 through Septem-
ber 2005 and included such diverse yet critical
stakeholders as local residents, the Port of
Oakland, an independent trucking company,
the Police Department, the Department of
Public Works, the District Air Board, and the
West Oakland Commerce Association. The
committee’s goal was to negotiate an actual
truck route that could address community
concerns without unduly burdening other
stakeholders.
To reinforce the collaborative spirit that
had been evident in earlier multistakeholder
meetings while assuring continued high level
resident engagement, the WOEIP partnership
established a collaborative process for the truck
route committee in which no one entity took
over the agenda. As a community partner stated:
[We] had an agency and a resident, or a business
person and a resident. It [was] never one single
entity in the lead. And we would go through the
process of training each other on how to get
along, how this would work. . . that was a new
policy for them, a new action for them . . . of the
community being a part of defining who were the
stakeholders.

Matters | S169
Although initially concerned about the im-
plications of having truckers and businesses
at the table, for example, just as WOEIP
leaders had been early on, community resi-
dents gained a better appreciation and un-
derstanding of the labor hardships of truckers
and the concerns of ‘‘mom-and-pop’’ store
owners and other small businesses who
benefited from the revenue generated by the
truckers’ presence in the neighborhood. Con-
versely, the truckers became more accepting
of a route that would take them out of the
neighborhood, whereas business owners be-
gan to recognize that as local shopkeepers,
they or their employees were also likely to
have their health adversely impacted by
heavy diesel truck traffic exposure.
By far the greatest challenge, however,
remained getting buy-in from the Port, whose
leadership, according to one community
leader, ‘‘thought that the community shouldn’t
be telling the Port what to do.’’ To better
engage this and other city partners in the
process, WOEIP’s local city councilwoman
and informal policy mentor offered to hold
the monthly meetings at her office:
so that people showed up: Other city depart-
ments showed up, the Commerce Association,
the Port, traffic department, truckers association
showed up, so we had buy in from all. . . The

power to change policy came out of that.
The city councilwoman was cited as key to
getting the Port as part of this process and
eventually agreeing to support the new truck
route.
Throughout this process, WOEIP leaders
and local residents frequently ‘‘made the
rounds’’ of neighborhood organizations, get-
ting on the agenda, keeping them informed on
‘‘where the routing discussion was going,’’
and getting their feedback on possible un-
intended consequences. In this way, even less
directly involved residents could have their
issues raised and discussed by the truck route
committee.
Once the committee agreed on a route,
and pushed for a city ordinance to implement
it, they engaged in several steps to help increase
awareness and support for the proposed
policy change. EIP leveraged its alliances with
other community and statewide groups orga-
nizing to combat diesel pollution, key among
them the West Oakland Toxics Reduction
Collaborative30 and the Ditching Dirty Diesel
Collaborative.31
Several town hall meetings and community
forums were held to further engage the larger
community and generate support for the
ordinance, and attracted up to 30 local partic-
ipants. Residents who expressed interest in
providing testimony at the upcoming City

Council meeting were also encouraged to do so,
and reminded to ‘‘stay on the mark’’ in telling
their own stories because ‘‘you’re here to put
a human face to the issue.’’
Getting to Policy Implementation: Two
Steps Forward, One Step Back
In September 2005, the WOEIP partnership
and its allies achieved a key victory when the
City Council unanimously passed a Truck
Route ordinance that adhered closely to the
specific truck routes the partnership proposed
Source. City of Oakland, California. Available at:
http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/11326.pdf.
Accessed
May 14, 2010.
FIGURE 1—Designated truck routes as proposed by truck route
committee, West Oakland,
California.
101, No. S1
(Figure 1). Several of the policy makers inter-

viewed noted that the partnership, and partic-
ularly its sound research and the strong com-
munity voice represented by WOEIP
community members, deserved substantial
credit both for this particular victory and for
subsequent broader efforts. The combined
presence and participation of grassroots resi-
dents and ‘‘grass-tops’’ level opinion leaders
(e.g., community-based organization heads),
together with researchers and representatives
of the truckers, the Port, etc., helped achieve
a unanimous vote that was ‘‘almost anticlimac-
tic’’ given all the work that had preceded it. As
a decision maker said of the WOEIP Pacific
Institute partnership,
Their research and advocacy have been critical––
critical––in making the Port recognize its re-
sponsibility to the surrounding neighborhoods––
that they should do their operations in a way that
doesn’t hurt the community.
Unfortunately, the most visible policy win
for which the partnership was given substantial
credit was also the most frustrating and in-
complete: as the partnership members and
policy makers interviewed all commented,
failure to enforce the new truck ordinance
made it, in many ways, a somewhat hollow
victory. As a Pacific Institute partner put it:
We had this great truck route, we had new signs,
we had brochures and maps that were suppos-
edly getting distributed through the Port of
Oakland, but there was no enforcement. And
without that, there’s no point. . . . [Enforcement]

was overlooked.
Other stakeholders pointed to the City’s
police officers being spread thin––and mostly
focused on violent crime–– as a key reason for
the lack of enforcement. A community partner
similarly noted that there was significant re-
sistance from the city in actually implementing
the truck route because it would generate more
work and require additional staff time. What-
ever the cause, failure to enforce the truck
route ordinance was a major disappointment to
the partnership, community members, and
other stakeholders who worked hard for its
passage. In retrospect, as Pacific Institute part-
ner reflected:
Often times the most easily identified policy
outcome is also the one that is least significant
from a community health perspective. Pre-
cisely because decision makers realize that the
easiest way to get a community off its back is to
pass something, without being committed in any
way to do all the hard work it takes to actually
realize the spirit and the vision of what the
community needs.
Although lack of policy enforcement was
a critical setback, this work has helped
prompt other environmental justice initiatives
addressing diesel pollution while further
building the capacity of WOEIP and its resident
leaders and activists. Several of the policy
makers interviewed credited WOEIP commu-
nity partners’ advocacy and perceived profes-

sionalism, in addition to the still much cited
CBPR truck studies conducted with Pacific
Institute, as having helped spur other local,
regional, and statewide changes. Together,
these changes have helped create a more fa-
vorable policy environment with respect to
environmental justice. The partnership’s work,
for example, prompted other agencies and
institutions to conduct their own studies in this
heavily impacted community. In 2006, the
California Air Resources Board (CARB) began
a comprehensive health risk assessment for
diesel exhaust in West Oakland, a multiyear
intensive endeavor to formally document the
sources, extent, and impact of diesel pollution
on health risk for West Oakland residents.32 In
the words of one Pacific Institute partner, ‘‘CARB
started paying attention, the Air District started
paying attention. These studies put diesel in
West Oakland on the map,’’ with the Air District
itself subsequently conducting follow-up studies
in this community.
As WOEIP gained recognition and an in-
creasing voice through the truck count and
truck idling work at the local level, it expanded
its focus to other air quality efforts happening
regionally and reframed them to increase their
local relevance. As a community leader
explained, ‘‘If you do ‘regional’ it will be
watered down [in terms of ] local impacts.’’
WOEIP therefore partnered with the Air Dis-
trict and the Port staff to design an air plan to
benefit West Oakland as part of the broader
goods movement efforts taking place region-
ally, statewide, and nationally. In the course of

this work, WOEIP also helped change the
structure of the planning group, so that a com-
munity member of WOEIP now serves as a
cochair. As an WOEIP leader and long time
resident pointed out:
We have moved from doing this truck thing to
being engaged in goods movement, identifying
something that’s local and then actually dealing
with what a clean air plan should look like locally.
Partners and policymakers described
WOEIP’s recent work as critical in getting the
Port of Oakland to commit to an 85% re-
duction of the community health risk caused by
its diesel operations by 2020. Although the
process has been challenging and the details of
the air plan are still being worked out, partners
have described how their work has improved
organizational structures so that the community
and other important stakeholders are now rep-
resented in air planning groups. As another
WOEIP community leader commented:
We’ve been successful on [many] procedural
levels. We were able to change the entire
structure of that air planning group [getting]
a community member on as a co-chair. After we
did that, we said, ‘‘Who else isn’t here? . . . we
think the industry ought to have a co-chair seat
and the health department [too].’’. . . So we
expanded the agenda, setting part of that to
include two other groups we thought were
important, some as allies and some as adversar-
ies, but voices that needed to be at the table. That
kind of approach gets us respect and changes our

perspective as a community organization. It adds
to our reputation in a positive way.
Finally, both the partnership’s early work
and subsequent efforts helped create condi-
tions in which partnership colearning could
occur, and the research and advocacy capacity
of the West Oakland community could grow,
fostering sustainability. As one community
partner noted:
As we did our own research and thought about
things, we were able to ask other questions. It
was good. . .much more of folks’ unknown in-
formation [was brought] out into the community.
Our ability to question, ‘‘Why was this? Why was
this happening here?’’ We were able to do much
more proactive advocacy on a lot of different
levels at the same time.
Similarly, a research partner at the Pacific
Institute spoke of how much she and her
organization continued to learn from the com-
munity and the leadership of WOEIP, particu-
larly about community organizing and advocacy.
New Directions and Building
Sustainability
An important hallmark of CBPR involves
its commitment to building community ca-
pacity as a means of ensuring long-term

Matters | S171
sustainability.21,33 After the truck count and
idling studies and subsequent work to establish
a truck route, WOEIP expanded its own initia-
tives on several fronts, including conducting
a second truck count in partnership with the Air
Quality Management District in 2008, playing
a key role in the formation of the West Oakland
Toxics Reduction Collaborative, and receiving
both a planning grant from the US Environ-
mental Protection Agency and a grant from the
Air District in support of its work. With assistance
from the Pacific Institute, WOEIP also has con-
tinued to build local leadership capacity, offering
a 4-week intensive training for West Oakland
residents on topics including environmental
health and land use planning, an understanding
of the policymaking process, and skill-building in
policy advocacy. Further, and in a major victory
for the West Oakland community, WOEIP’s
executive director was appointed a Commis-
sioner of the Oakland Port Authority in 2007.
The relationships formed between the
WOEIP community partnership and agencies
including the Air District, the Port of Oakland,
and private trucking industry have also con-
tinued to develop. Recently, for example, when
over 1200 independent truckers were threat-
ened with losing the ability to service the Port
due to a delay in getting grants for needed

retrofitting equipment, WOEIP supported the
truckers’ request for an extension, and in the
process helped prevent many of these pre-
dominately immigrant workers from losing
their jobs.
WOEIP’s and the Pacific Institute’s truck
count and related studies and policy level work
continue to serve as a model for others of how
CBPR can help produce solid data and use it to
move forward environmental policy efforts in
a way that empowers and respects the com-
munity. Recently, for example, WOEIP pro-
vided technical assistance and loaned equip-
ment to another nonprofit organization,
Communities for a Better Environment, which
used the partnership’s truck count model in
doing its own truck count study in East Oak-
land.
Finally, and in a further effort to help take
this work to scale, without losing sight of local
concerns, WOEIP helped design the statewide
Goods Movement Action Plan, and WOEIP’s
executive director also served on the working
group of the US Enviromental Protection
Agency’s National Environmental Justice Ad-
visory Council (NEJAC). Drawing on the re-
search of the WOEIP partnership and numer-
ous other groups and organizations, NEJAC
produced a major report with recommenda-
tions for federal, state, tribal, local, and other
agencies on how best to identify, prevent, and
eliminate the disproportionate burden of air
pollution from goods movement in low-income

communities of color.34
Without ignoring the hurdles faced in this
work––and in particular, the failure to get
adequate enforcement of the truck route
ordinance––the value of the partnership’s con-
tributions and their ripple effects in other
communities and on the state and even
national levels, were highlighted by policy-
makers and other key informants. Finally,
the role of this partnership in showcasing the
utility of research collaborations that ‘‘put
community leaders in the drivers seat’’ was
underscored. In the words of a Pacific Institute
partner:
We were not doing the research ‘on them,’ but
they were leading the research effort. They were
asking the questions, choosing the contractor,
deciding the policy solutions, and we were
supporting them with technical and facilitation
support throughout the process. This is com-
pletely the reverse of the typical academic---
community partnerships. What if a high-pow-
ered research institution could be put at the
service of communities (instead of industries and
others)––what dramatic changes could result?
Well, we’ve seen them.
DISCUSSION
Our research goal examined the CBPR pro-
cesses and outcomes involved in the West
Oakland EIP partnership’s efforts to study and
address, through policy level change, the
problem of disproportionate exposure to diesel

truck exhaust in this community. The partner-
ship’s struggles and successes in this regard
were highlighted, as a means of illustrating how
community-led partnerships may use CBPR to
help change environmental health policy or
the broader policy environment.
Although the use of multiple methods of
data collection helped increase our confidence
in the study findings, several limitations should
be noted. Recall problems, particularly sur-
rounding the original research studies con-
ducted in 2003, may have led to inaccuracies
in the reporting of study methodology. To
minimize this, we carefully studied the outside
consultant’s (TIAX) detailed report that helped
corroborate the interviewees’ description of
study procedures. Partners and policy makers
interviewed may have over or underempha-
sized the role of the WOEIP partnership’s
research and advocacy efforts in helping move
policy, and may similarly have under or over-
estimated the role of other stakeholders and
contextual factors. The use of triangulation of
data sources was helpful in partially mitigating
this problem, as we found a high level of
consistency in responses among the 7 key
partners interviewed; their responses were well
corroborated by the policymaker interviews
and archival reviews. However, it remained
impossible to determine with any certainty the
extent to which the WOEIP’s partnership’s
work contributed to policy outcomes. As Ster-
man35 noted, the lengthy time delays in policy-
related work precluded understanding the long-

term consequences of the actions of any in-
dividual actors. As a result, ‘‘Follow up studies
must be carried out over decades or life-
times. . . .’’35 Finally, the nature of this small
qualitative study meant that by definition, the
findings were not generalizable.
The results of this case study complemented
those of a number of other studies in suggesting
the utility of a CBPR approach in producing
credible research that may help promote envi-
ronmental health policy change.11---18,36,37 Con-
sistent with the WOEIP partnership’s experience,
for example, studies credited CBPR efforts with
playing a key role in helping implement policies
to reduce exposures to diesel bus emissions in
Harlem, New York38 and Roxbury, Massachu-
setts11 and to secure the renegotiation of a rule
governing maximum allowable cancer risk from
stationary facilities in southern California.18,39
Moreover, similar to the work of the WOEIP
partnership, several of these efforts have been
credited with helping change the broader policy
environment. The Southern California Environ-
mental Justice Collaborative, for example,
received substantial credit for the state Environ-
mental Protection Agency and other decision-
making bodies increasingly thinking in terms of
cumulative rather than individual risk and taking
community health impacts into account in their
policy deliberations.18,39 In New York City, the
West Harlem Environmental ACTion, Inc. (WE

101, No. S1
ACT) partnership’s high quality research and
effective community-based advocacy helped se-
cure the community partner’s executive director
a leadership role on the task force charged with
developing a statewide environmental justice
policy.38
Finally, and in addition to its role in several
specific policy wins in Long Beach, Los
Angeles, and the Inland Valleys (e.g., adoption
of the joint Ports’ ‘‘Clean Air Action Plan’’),
Trade, Health & Environment (THE) Impact
project was credited with helping
change the debate on neighborhood contamina-
tion through increased community participation
and recognition of the health impacts from living
in close proximity to mobile source air pollution.
A recent decision to delay expansion of
a major freeway to enable more community
input in the deliberations was credited in part
to THE Impact Project and its successes in
changing the policy environment by ‘‘[elevating]
community voices in the policy arena, while also
using the science and policy work of the aca-
demic partners to strengthen those voices.’’40
Several of the factors identified in the pres-
ent study as critical to the WOEIP partnership’s

success also reflect those of other community---
academic partnerships with a similar goal of
helping to redress environmental injustice
through policy change. The need for a strong
community base including effective alliance
and community leadership has been widely
cited.14,15,19,33,38,39,41 Links to coalitions, for ex-
ample, have been shown to help ‘‘reframe an
issue so as to broaden support.’’41 The impor-
tance of credible science that can ‘‘stand up to
careful scrutiny’’ additionally has been widely
emphasized,18,36---38,42 as has the effective com-
bining of research, community organizing, and
policy advocacy.11---14,17---19,43
Other CBPR case studies highlighted the
importance, especially early on, of strong
technical assistance as both strengthening the
research and helping open doors and forge
alliances with respected entities that could be of
strategic importance in the future.12,14,17,36
Although academics sometimes are reticent to be
involved with the mass media, Farquhar and
Wing44 noted:
Environmental health findings presented via
mainstream media channels can protect exposed
community members, motivate participation in
democratic processes, and influence public
opinion and policymakers.
Effective media advocacy, in which the mass
media were used strategically to promote
a community or public policy agenda, contrib-

uted substantially to the visibility and impact of
the WOEIP partnership’s work, and have like-
wise been important to other environmental
policy-oriented CBPR collaborations.11,14,17----
19,42,46 Ritas’45 online resource ‘‘Speaking Truth,
Creating Power: A Guide to Policy Work for
Community based Participatory Research Prac-
titioners’’ may be useful to partnerships wishing
to incorporate this and other forms of policy
advocacy in their CBPR efforts.
The high value that the WOEIP partnership
assigned to building collaborative relation-
ships with potential policy allies and regula-
tors, as well as other community-based
organizations and local and regional coali-
tions, was reminiscent of the work of other
successful environmental justice efforts
around the country.11---12,14---19,39,42,43,45 Yet the
WOEIP partnership’s inclusion of representa-
tives of the trucking industry, whose behavior
they sought to change, may have set an impor-
tant new standard in such work. This inclusive
approach, captured in the catch phrase ‘‘who else
should be at the table?’’ appeared critical to such
policy wins as getting a truck route ordinance
and more recently, getting the Port of Oakland to
commit to an 85% reduction in the community
health risk caused by its diesel operations by
2020––a policy that could ultimately have greater
health payoff for the community than the ill-fated
truck route. The community organizing maxim
that there are ‘‘no permanent friends, no perma-
nent enemies’’ appears to have held the WOEIP
partnership in particularly good stead in this work.

Yet as this and other CBPR case studies
focused on environmental justice illus-
trated,36,38,45,47 tensions emerged throughout
this process that should be addressed openly and
with an eye toward finding ‘‘common ground.’’
The need for WOEIP and Pacific Institute
partners to become comfortable with their dif-
ferent skill levels and roles in the more technical
aspects of the research was critical for the process
to go forward, as was the subsequent working
out the tensions some community partners felt
about including truckers in policy deliberations.
Finally, as this and other environmental justice
projects case studies illustrated36,38,48 policy
wins can be shallow victories if not followed by
strong implementation commitment and over-
sight. Each of the 7 community and outside
research partners interviewed commented on
the failure to enforce the 2006 truck route
ordinance as a bitter pill to take, even if not
entirely unexpected, in the aftermath of a strong,
inclusive, and well-fought campaign. In retro-
spect, it would have been useful for the com-
munity and the WOEIP partnership to include in
their data collection documentation regarding
implementation of the ordinance, and further, for
residents to work with local law enforcement
to cite offenders. Yet as noted previously, the
dearth of sufficient police officers, and their
understandable focus on problems such as vio-
lent crime, probably doomed the ordinance
strategy from the outset. Further, as several of
those interviewed commented, relatively easy
policy wins like the passage of an ordinance,
although important symbolically and in increas-

ing community visibility, may not in themselves
be strong enough to bring about real change.
In retrospect, and in addition to its sound
research, the major accomplishment of the
WOEIP partnership may well have been in
substantially amplifying community voices in
the policy arena: WOEIP and its partners are
routinely consulted by key decision-making
bodies and are often ‘‘at the table’’ when
important decisions are being made. The ap-
pointment of WOEIP’s director to the Port
Commission further stands as an important
signal that West Oakland and its leaders and
organizations are making headway in attain-
ing the ‘‘procedural justice’’ (having a say in
decision-making affecting their community)49
that is an integral part of environmental justice
for low income communities of color.17
The fact that WOEIP conducted its own
truck count study and brought in its own
federal and local grant funding, are suggestive
of the longer term contributions of this CBPR
partnership to the community capacity building
that can further sustainable change. As Srini-
vasan and Collman52 and others46,47 pointed
out, building such capacity and striving ‘‘for
a more equitable partnership––not only in the
distribution of resources but also in power/
authority, the process of research, and its out-
comes’’ is a goal for which CBPR partnerships
need to strive.50

Matters | S173
Recent changes in the context within which
environmental health-focused CBPR takes
place must be carefully monitored for their
potential impacts, however. On the positive
side, increasing collaboration between multiple
partnerships and organizations concerned with
diesel emissions and their health impacts, in-
cluding, in California, the Ditching Dirty Diesel
Collaborative,31 and the statewide coalition,
Community Action to Fight Asthma51 may be
increasing the clout of community, health de-
partment, and academic partners working to
secure broader policy change in this area.
Conversely, major cutbacks associated with the
severe recession may also take a toll on this
work, both in constraining funding and resulting
in a weakening of regulations or implementation
in the name of cost containment. Finally, as
Sterman35 noted, ‘‘Complexity hinders the gen-
eration of evidence’’ and any efforts to discuss
the contributions of CBPR partnerships to
changes in policy or the policy environment must
be undertaken with considerable caution.
Bearing these precautions in mind, however,
the WOEIP partnership may serve as a useful
model for community and academically trained
researchers interested in establishing sustain-
able local partnerships that can produce cred-

ible research, build community capacity, and
potentially contribute to changes in policy and
the policy environment that may promote
environmental health. j
About the Authors
Priscilla A. Gonzalez is with the Berkeley Media Studies
Group, Berkeley, CA. Meredith Minkler and Analilia P.
Garcia are with the School of Public Health, University of
California, Berkeley. Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge
are with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project,
Oakland, CA. Catalina Garzón and Meena Palaniappan are
with the Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA. At the time of the
study, Swati Prakash was with the Pacific Institute, Oakland.
Correspondence may be sent to Meredith Minkler, DrPH,
MPH, School of Public Health, University of California,
Berkeley, 50 University Hall, Berkeley, CA. 94720-7360
(e-mail [email protected]). Reprints can be ordered at
http://www.ajph.org by clicking the ‘‘Reprints/Eprints’’ link.
This article was accepted July 12, 2010.
Contributors
M. Minkler originated and supervised the study including
conceptualization, data collection, analysis and interpre-
tation, and the writing of this article. P. A. Gonzalez and
A. P. Garcia assisted with data collection, analysis and
interpretation, and in the writing and editing of the
article. M. Gordon, B. Beveridge, M. Palanippan, C. Garzón,
and S. Prakash all provided valuable information and
feedback, including help with interpretation of findings
and editing of the final version of the article.
Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant from The
California Endowment and the authors are grateful
to the Endowment, and particularly former Research
Director Will Nicholas, for their support.
The authors also acknowledge project team
members Victor Rubin, Angela Blackwell, Mildred
Thompson, and other colleagues at PolicyLink, Inc.,
and research consultant, Nina Wallerstein, as well
research assistant, Alice Ricks, for their contributions.
Steve Mastronarde also provided helpful perspec-
tives. We are especially grateful to the many com-
munity and academic partners and policymakers
who generously shared their time and their insights
to make this study possible.
Human Participant Protection
This study was approved by the institutional review
board of the University of California, Berkeley. All
key informants signed informed consent letters be-
fore their participation, and safeguards were taken to
ensure confidentiality.
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Matters | S175
Chapter 6 - Ethical Considerations in CBPR
Members of the Havasupai tribe “had given DNA samples to
university researchers starting in 1990, in the hope that they
might provide genetic clues to the tribe’s devastating rate of
diabetes. But they learned that their blood samples had been
used to study many other things, including mental illness and
theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their
traditional stories.” … “I’m not against scientific research,”
said Carletta Tilousi, 39, a member of the Havasupai tribal
council. “I just want it to be done right. They used our blood for
all these studies, people got degrees and grants, and they never
asked our permission.”1
In the Havasupai case, biological samples were used for other
purposes than those for which participant consent was given.
This bioethical dilemma is one example of an ethical misstep
that is pertinent to community-based research. In this scenario,
the ethical dilemma occurred at both the individual as well as at
the community level. Not only was the consent of individuals
who originally agreed to participate in the study for specific
purposes disregarded, but there were implications for the entire
community as well. In this chapter, we will explore some of the
ethical issues encountered in CBPR. We will address the
following areas:
1. Principles that guide ethical conduct of research and how
they pertain to CBPR
2. The concepts of risk and benefit in CBPR
3. Ethical considerations unique to CBPR partnerships
PRINCIPLES OF ETHICAL CONDUCT OF RESEARCH
The Belmont Report stands as a significant guidepost for the

protection of human subjects and has influenced federal
regulation and the conduct of biomedical and behavioral
research nationally.2 The report, issued in 1978, set out basic
ethical principles underlying acceptable conduct of research
involving human subjects. These include respect for persons,
beneficence, and justice. Each of these principles has wide-
ranging application for research involving individual human
subjects. Respect for persons requires that the research is
voluntary and that informed consent must be comprehensible to
the individual. It also recognizes the protection of special
populations of individuals with diminished autonomy, including
children, prisoners, and those with cognitive disabilities. The
concept of beneficence translates to protecting individuals from
harm by minimizing risks and maximizing benefits. The concept
of justice requires that the benefits and burdens of research are
fairly distributed and relates to the selection of subjects in a
manner that is just and fair. These concepts are the
underpinnings of institutional review board (IRB) regulations.
IRBs are the groups that oversee ethical conduct of research in
academic environments.
There are a number of limitations of these guiding principles as
they relate to CBPR. First, these concepts are primarily focused
on the protection of the individual as research subject and not
on the protection of communities as organized entities. Second,
these principles lack guidelines for the ethical behavior of
partners engaged in community/academic collaboration. They
also lack guidelines for assessing the risks and benefits to a
community as a whole. In a recent review of 30 IRBs, Flicker
and colleagues (2007) did not find adequate evidence that IRB
policies and protocols applied to communities or to CBPR
projects.3 Today, as the practice of CBPR grows, we need to
assess how the Belmont principles of respect, beneficence, and
justice can be expanded to include communities in addition to
the individuals residing within them.
In CBPR, there are several areas that deserve particular
attention from an ethical standpoint.

1. Informed consent for research at the community level
2. Risks and benefits of research from a community perspective
3. Community standards of justice, including those of
partnership ethics and economic distribution
COMMUNITY INFORMED CONSENT
In human subjects research, informed consent involving any
individual participant in research is required and must meet the
standards set out in the Belmont Report. However, getting
informed consent from an entire community is not realistic. So
how does a researcher assess informed consent at the
community level? How is the value of a research project
communicated to the targeted community as a whole? Most
importantly, how can a researcher feel confident that the
research is perceived as acceptable and feasible to the
community? Obtaining community consent is particularly
challenging given that the individuals in the community are not
homogeneous and opinions of various subgroups may differ
substantially. To address these questions, CBPR researchers
need to understand the values and mores of the community at
large. They need to be aware of how these unstated perspectives
pertain to ethical conduct in said community. Learning about
the cultural perspectives, history, governance, and so forth of a
community will help the researcher develop this understanding.
Take, for example, the Havasupai tribe case, in which
nonconsented research on DNA from blood samples suggested
migration patterns that contradicted Havasupai origin myths. In
addition, blood has great spiritual meaning to the Havasupai,
and its return to the tribe brings ancestors home to their resting
place. Thus, research using blood samples in this community
raised additional ethical concerns about the care and appropriate
return of samples to the tribe, none of which was considered.1
Community informed consent depends largely on defining and
understanding the community of study and making sure that the
leaders (formal and informal) support the research. In order to
understand cultural considerations and assess the community’s
view of a research project, a CBPR researcher relies heavily on

the community advisory board (CAB). The CAB serves as an
entrée into the community. Its members provide needed advice
and are the link between the researcher and the larger
community. Their knowledge of the culture, local actors,
politics, and social networks will help the researcher navigate
the community landscape and determine project feasibility. As
in the case of our Everett example, an actively engaged CAB
that represents the community can be an enormous resource
providing insight into acceptability of research and helping to
ensure that there is community buy-in for the project. They will
also be instrumental in helping the researcher understand the
community context for the research (political and social
climate), the competing priorities in the community that could
limit participation, and the appropriateness of the chosen
methods for consent and recruitment from both a cultural and
practical standpoint. In our Everett example, the CAB was made
up of leaders from the immigrant communities’ advocacy
groups. When we discussed recruitment, consent, and
inclusion/exclusion criteria, the opinions of these individuals
played an important role in decision making. CAB members
who had access to constituents could therefore vet the project
and the methods before we began and could tell us what would
and would not work in their community. They translated the
research tools, piloted them with immigrant groups, and led the
recruitment efforts.4 These community members were able to
assess acceptability and feasibility and help researchers develop
their eligibility criteria, their consent forms, and the
informational materials used in recruitment. They reminded the
research team of the need for low-literacy materials that were
easily understood and nonthreatening. As researchers, we would
not have been able to communicate our research goals to the
community without the help of these leaders. In addition, these
community partners were likely to take any findings from the
project to future action.
To sum up, some of the critical questions to consider regarding
community informed consent in CBPR include:

· Is the research project acceptable to the community of
interest?
· Have you connected with leaders (informal and formal) to
assess this acceptability?
· Have the criteria for inclusion been discussed with the
community, and does this pose any ethical challenges?
· Are there particular cultural issues that need to be addressed?
· Is the CAB actively advising on these issues?
RISKS AND BENEFITS FROM A COMMUNITY
PERSPECTIVE
The concepts of risks and benefits from research at the
individual level are easily understood; how will the research
potentially benefit the participants and how will it potentially
harm them? Most importantly, do the benefits outweigh the
risks? In CBPR, not only will the researcher need to assess the
individual risks and benefits of research, but he or she will need
to understand the risks and benefits for the community as a
whole. In other words, it is important to identify what the
community will potentially gain or lose by participation in the
research. Table 6.1 presents a framework for determining
community risks/benefits compared to individual risks/benefits.
This is discussed in greater detail in Ross and colleagues’
(2010) work on human subjects protection in CBPR, from which
this table was adapted.5
Table 6.1 Risk and Benefits of Research: Individual and
Community Perspectives
Community Risks and Benefits of the Research Process
Whereas an individual may experience physical or
psychological risk from research, a community might
experience a risk to its structure from the conduct or the results
of research. From a risk perspective, the process of conducting
CBPR may be stressful at both the individual and the
community levels. Community members may have other
priorities that compete for their attention, or they may have

concerns about how recruitment is progressing. Similarly, the
stress of CBPR on community-based organizations involved in
research may also pose a risk. If the organization
underestimates the time required or defers other responsibilities
in favor of research, it could lead to organizational instability.
There are also a myriad of other contextual forces facing
communities, and during the research process, these priorities
may be in direct conflict with the research process. For
example, agreed-upon research methods such as random
assignment or use of control groups may become untenable due
to unforeseen political issues. In the face of sudden budget cuts
impacting low-income women, a project that plans to randomly
assign disadvantaged women to an intervention that offers
additional support (navigation and coaching) may suddenly be
seen as unjust or unethical because some people are excluded
from receiving these services. The contextual community
factors may ultimately force a mid-research shift in design. One
study by Levy and colleagues (2006) speaks to this type of shift
based on community values: that is, a random assignment of
participants to an asthma intervention was planned, but due to
community concerns, it was not possible. As Levy notes:
Much CBPR research to date has been observational or
otherwise fallen short of achieving clinical trial standards,
which has potentially limited the impact of these studies on
public health policy and programs. This may arise partly from
the complexity of managing and sustaining equitable
partnerships, as well as from resistance from community or city
partners to aspects of scientific methodology that may not
directly benefit the community in the short term (since a more
rigorous methodology may conflict with addressing immediate
needs).6
While there are community risks posed by the CBPR process,
there are also a number of benefits to the community.
Community members who are involved in CBPR are likely to
learn new skills that contribute to increased community capacity
for future problem solving. As community members gain

facility with the use of data, research methodology, and
systematic analysis, they are more likely to use evidence in
their practice settings. In our Somerville example, community
partners learned about surveillance strategies and data mapping.
Since that time, not only have they continued to monitor data to
assess suicide attempts and completions across the age range,
but they have also used these skills to examine a host of
community issues ranging from food security to youth
development activities. The research process also builds new
partnerships and alliances that could result in future
collaborations for community good. Financial resources flow to
the community during the research process, supporting
community members. The research process in CBPR can also
give voice to vulnerable populations as they are part of the
decision-making process. The empowerment experience during
CBPR as community members take on their own issues is a
powerful tool in community development and organizing.
Building leadership along with skills is perhaps one of the most
significant outcomes of the CBPR process. In our Everett
example, immigrant leaders had opportunities to express
themselves, shape the agenda, and lead efforts. Their
empowerment is likely to translate to future action beyond the
research agenda. Building capacity and empowerment in
vulnerable communities is an important outcome of CBPR.
Community Risks and Benefits of the Research Results
Research results also have potential to pose risks as well as
benefits for communities and community organizations involved
in CBPR. An important ethical consideration is whether the
research will contribute to local benefit or potentially cause
harm. Certainly, results that help to solve local problems and
garner support for action will likely be seen in a positive light
and be embraced by community partners. However, community
“harm” is also a possibility and is often unanticipated. The
results of research have the potential to stigmatize a community
or group if findings are disparaging. For example, in a study by
Marcelli (2009) that surveyed various populations of

immigrants, it was noted that one immigrant population was
more likely to be undocumented than others.7 This immigrant
group perceived this type of information as stigmatizing and
more likely to make them the target of law enforcement and
deportation action. While this was not the intent of the research,
it was an unforeseen outcome that put an already vulnerable
community at further risk. Other examples might include work
on environmental issues that, while providing important
evidence for health improvement, could also lead to loss of
property values. Further, even neutral results could pose a risk
to the community. For example, an evaluation of a community
program that does not show effect could lead to loss of services
to vulnerable populations and a concomitant loss of jobs for
employees. Thus, it is important to discuss these ethical
concerns with community partners at the beginning of a project.
How will the community deal with unfavorable results? How
will these be disseminated and translated to the community?
How will they be utilized by both community and academic
partners? How will the partnership protect the community
without censoring findings?
Ethical Considerations for CBPR Partnerships
The CBPR academic/community partnership serves as the
cornerstone for CBPR, and thus, it is important to understand
the ethical considerations that shape and maintain these
partnerships.8 Partnership relies on power sharing in decision
making, trust, respect, and economic distribution. But there are
also risks and benefits inherent in being a community member
of a research team. On one hand, there are the benefits of
opportunities for skills acquisition and resources, while on the
other hand, there are risks in that the relationship with academia
may alter the community member’s relationship with her or his
own community. The person may even lose the respect of the
community by becoming associated with the “outside”
academics.9 In addition, when the project is over and
participants are no longer employed by the researcher, are they
received back into the community? During the research process,

there may also be conflicts among CAB members. These can
lead to breakdown of the CAB and shifts in relationships that
ultimately impact the community. For example, as a result of
disagreement, community groups may fracture relationships
with local government authorities, leading to problems within
the community beyond the scope of the research project.
Similarly, problems in relationships between researcher and
community partners may arise if strategies for equitable sharing
of power and economic resources are not in place. Does the
project really allow for full participation of community
partners? Is there adherence to the principles of CBPR? Are the
constructs of partnership demonstrated in the research plan, in
decision making, and in budgets? Researchers and their IRBs
can help assess adherence to ethical principles in CBPR. As
developed by the Community Engaged Research Subcommittee
of the Harvard Catalyst Regulatory Core, a set of questions like
the following can be helpful.10
· Does the proposed activity respond to the needs of this
community and/or support existing infrastructure or networks?
· What is the plan for engaging with this community?
· How will the community be involved in the development and
implementation of this particular project?
· What is the researchers’ relationship with key stakeholders in
the community?
· Has community risk versus individual risk been evaluated
properly?
· Are recruitment strategies culturally/linguistically
appropriate?
· What role will the community partner have in recruitment?
· How accessible/approachable is the researcher to the
community stakeholders?
· Does the proposed consent form use (linguistically and
culturally) appropriate language?
· Are there appropriate resources devoted to this project?
· What resources are required (financial, physical, etc.)?
· Is there an understanding of the institution’s and community

partners’ needs/capacity for development and implementation of
planned activities?
· Who will provide these resources?
· What is the community’s role and expectation regarding the
allocation of these resources?
· Are there financial resources available for translation
services/interpreter services?
DISSEMINATION
Part of the any CBPR project is dissemination of results,
whether it be for publication in the scientific arena (peer-
reviewed journals) or for action in the community-based context
(discussion, forums, press releases). The manner in which
CBPR dissemination is conducted is part of the discussion of
risk and benefit to the community. Inappropriate dissemination
in CBPR can have ethical implications. For example, if a
community is not privy to research results or required to wait
until “the paper comes out,” this does not represent an equitable
power-sharing relationship. While the lack of information may
simply be an error of omission, it does not meet the
requirements of a CBPR partnership. Thus, in CBPR,
considerations for how the results will be communicated to the
community should come first. The CAB should be involved in
this discussion and in dissemination decision making. It needs
to consider the best way to provide the results to the
community, be that as a report, forum, newspaper article, or
policy brief. Returning the findings to the community is a
necessity, and it is this feedback loop that differentiates CBPR
from other types of research. The use of the data for action is
the major benefit for a community, and thus withholding the
information would connote a risk. Worst-case scenarios are
when the researcher disseminates results that the community
partners are unaware of. Specific ethical questions around
dissemination include:
· What plans/strategies are in place to disseminate the results
and elicit feedback from community stakeholders?
· Will dissemination be through multiple venues (e.g.,

community forums, presentations, journal articles, websites)?
· Are these venues effective and accessible to both community
members/providers and researchers?
· Will there be a process to inform community stakeholders
about the role of the IRB?
WHEN THE CBPR PROJECT ENDS
There may be ethical considerations that arise when a CBPR
research project ends. Given the extensive community
engagement in CBPR, this issue can be extremely important for
the community and for the success of future
academic/community partnerships. CBPR includes a focus on
local action and sustainable change. The research is not just for
research purposes but also has implications for local impact. A
CBPR researcher must consider in all phases of the research the
salient question of what the research will leave behind at the
conclusion of a CBPR project. This may include direct impact
from the research project and findings as well as the next steps
following its conclusion. Toward that end, the CBPR
partnership will have to grapple with questions of sustainability
and how to obtain additional resources to support change and
the activities associated with that change. Will the researcher
continue to work with the community despite the loss of
economic support (research grant funding)? Are the
academic/community relationships ongoing or simply project
based? Once a community group is mobilized and focused on
action, questions about resources and sustainability will
certainly arise, and the researchers must assess their role in this
agenda. These are difficult questions to answer and perhaps are
best assessed at the beginning of the project when the
partnership determines its mutually agreed-upon goals. The use
of MOAs or contractual agreements can certainly help, but the
communication about these issues throughout the project is
imperative. As in any relationship, the need for clear, ongoing
communication about difficult issues is something that the
partnership must seek to address to avoid later confrontations
and to plan for sustainability from the first day forward.

CONCLUSION
The principles outlined in the Belmont Report of respect,
beneficence, and justice are applicable not only to the
individual involved in research but to communities as well. Part
of being a CBPR practitioner is understanding how community
risk and benefit are assessed and how it will affect your
research design and dissemination. The impact of research may
have long-term impact on communities that ranges far beyond
the specific “side effects” of the research process. The CBPR
researcher should consider the risks and benefits from the
perspective of the individual and the community of interest. As
IRBs assess CBPR, they too will need to consider the ethical
implications of this type of work. A synopsis of these
implications can be found in Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Application of the Belmont Principles for CBPR
Informed Consent
Voluntariness
· How is the community consent to be obtained?
· How are community leaders and groups involved in
recruitment?
· What compensation is allocated to community members or
groups?
· What conflicts of interest may affect community participation?
Comprehension
· Are materials culturally and linguistically appropriate?
· How are community leaders and groups involved in key
decisions in the design and conduct of research?
· What training will be provided to community members?
Risks and Benefits
· Individual
· Individual by association with the group
· Community
· Disruption of community cohesion by research
· Risks of disseminating sensitive data to the community
· Risks of results harming community
Selection of Subjects

· How is the community defined?
· How are community leaders identified?
· How are community leaders involved in defining inclusion and
exclusion criteria?
· What are the criteria for distribution of economic benefits?
· How are community standards of fairness applied?
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Activities
Provide students with an example of a CBPR project that was
conducted locally. Then have students point out potential
ethical issues that this research might have raised for the
individuals and the community.
A CBPR project focuses on environmental health hazards in a
community of 80,000 people. The project is trying to assess the
impact of an incinerator on cancer rates in the community.
Based on preliminary findings, the community advisory board
begins to suspect there is a link between the incinerator and
higher cancer rates in one community. As the researcher, you
have not drawn any conclusions yet or “crunched the data”;
however, you are getting pressure from your community
partners to release the data for advocacy purposes. Describe
three ethical dilemmas that you might face given this situation.
Questions
1. What are the three concepts underpinning the Belmont
Report? Describe each of these concepts.
2. How do these concepts apply to a community rather than an
individual?
3. What are the risks of research when the community is the
concern rather than an individual?
4. Are there times when an individual would be protected but a
community might suffer harm? Describe an example of this.
5. What are some strategies a researcher could use to protect a
community from hazardous research?
NOTES
1. Harmon A. Indian tribe wins fight to limit research of its
DNA. New York Times. April 21, 2010.

2. The National Commission for the Protection of Human
Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont
Report. Ethical Principles and Guideline for the Protection of
Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare; 1978.
3. Flicker S, Travers R, Guta A, McDonald S, Meagher A.
Ethical dilemmas in community-based participatory research:
recommendations for institutional review boards. Journal of
Urban Health. 2007 Jul;84(4):478–93.
4. Hacker K, Chu J, Leung C, Marra R, Pirie A, Brahimi M,
English M, Beckmann J, Acevedo-Garcia D, Marlin RP. The
impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigrant
health: perceptions of immigrants in Everett, Massachusetts,
USA. Social Science & Medicine. 2011 Aug;73(4):586–94.
5. Ross LF, Loup A, Nelson RM, Botkin JR, Kost R, Smith GR,
Gehlert S.
Human subjects protections in community-engaged research: a
research ethics framework. Journal of Empirical Research on
Human Research Ethics: An International Journal. 2010;5(1):5–
18.
6. Levy JI, Brugge D, Peters JL, Clougherty JE, Saddler SS. A
community-based participatory research study of multifaceted
in-home environmental interventions for pediatric asthmatics in
public housing. Social Science & Medicine. 2006
Oct;63(8):2191–203.
7. Marcelli E, Holmes L, Estella D, da Rocha F, Granberry P,
Buxton O. (In)Visible (Im)migrants: The Health and
Socioeconomic integration of Brazilians in Metropolitan
Boston. San Diego, CA: Center for Behavioral and Community
Health Studies, San Diego State University; 2009.
8. Ross LF, Loup A, Nelson RM, Botkin JR, Kost R, Smith GR,
Gehlert S.
Nine key functions for a human subjects protection program for
community-engaged research: points to consider. Journal of
Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics: An
International Journal. 2010;5(1):33–48.

9. Minkler M, Wallerstein N., eds. Comunity-Based
Participatory Research for Health. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
Bass; 2003.
10. Harvard Catalyst Community Engaged Research (CeNR)
Subcommittee. Top Questions for IRB to Assess Community
Engaged Research (unpublished committee notes). Boston, MA:
Harvard Catalyst; 2011.
(Hacker 107-120)
Hacker, Karen. Community-Based Participatory Research.
SAGE Publications, Inc, 02/2013. VitalBook file.
The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation
for accuracy before use.

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