New Case Western Reserve PEER Program for community organizations

The opportunity to find common ground in health research between academia and community organizations is vast. Unwavering in its vision to work for the collective good, a new pilot program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine aims to bolster these collaborations by offering a fellowship program, not to researchers or doctors, but to employees of community organizations.

The new Partners in Education, Evaluation, and Research (PEER) Program will bring community organizations together with the academic community to foster and grow research relationships, specifically to improve community health. This is an 18-month, part-time training program for individuals from community organizations, such as government health departments and non-profit agencies. The training will introduce the fellows to study processes and methodologies, helping them learn how to implement and evaluate research within their organization.

Within this time period, the five representatives will attend a year of interactive training and develop a research project on a health topic relevant to their organization. Additionally, each PEER fellow will be matched with both a partner from their organization and a faculty partner from Case Western Reserve who is active in community-based participatory research, which engages the community members in all stages of research. During the program, the fellows will disseminate their key learnings to their organization. The goal is for their new skills and training to increase their organization's research capacity.

"We know the PEER Program will go a long way toward removing some of the mutual misconceptions held by both the academic community and community organizations about research and evaluation," says Elaine Borawski, PhD, principal investigator and director, Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods and Angela Bowen Williamson Professor in Community Nutrition at the School of Medicine. "Our hope is to build a lasting bridge between the two for future partnerships that extend well beyond the pilot cohort and the initial participants."

The inaugural fellows from the June 2012 Pilot Cohort are from the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland, Susan G. Komen for the Cure (Northeast Ohio Affiliate), Environmental Health Watch, and Ohio State University Extension.

"I work within the community every day, and this program will help me translate our work to them and help me understand more about evaluation and research without relying on an outside agency," says pilot cohort fellow Kimberly Foreman, associate director, Environmental Health Watch.