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. 2025 Feb 27;9(1):e66.
doi: 10.1017/cts.2025.39. eCollection 2025.

Addressing barriers to sustainable academic-community partnerships through Community Health Grants

Stacey M Gomes  1   2   3 , Monica J Mitchell  1   2   4   5 , Teresa Smith  1   2 , Eric Rademacher  2   6 , Sharon Watkins  2   7 , Lori E Crosby  1   2   5 , Farrah M Jacquez  2   4
Affiliations

Addressing barriers to sustainable academic-community partnerships through Community Health Grants

Stacey M Gomes et al. J Clin Transl Sci. .

Abstract

To facilitate and sustain community-engaged research (CEnR) conducted by academic-community partnerships (ACPs), a Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA)-funded Community Engagement Core (CEC) and Community Partner Council (CPC) co-created two innovative microgrant programs. The Community Health Grant (CHG) and the Partnership Development Grant (PDG) programs are designed to specifically fund ACPs conducting pilot programs aimed at improving health outcomes. Collectively, these programs have engaged 94 community partner organizations while impacting over 55,000 individuals and leveraging $1.2 million to fund over $10 million through other grants and awards. A cross-sectional survey of 57 CHG awardees demonstrated high overall satisfaction with the programs and indicated that participation addressed barriers to CEnR, such as building trust in research and improving partnership and program sustainability. The goal of this paper is to (1) describe the rationale and development of the CHG and PDG programs; (2) their feasibility, impact, and sustainability; and (3) lessons learned and best practices. Institutions seeking to implement similar programs should focus on integrating community partners throughout the design and review processes and prioritizing projects that align with specific, measurable goals.

Keywords: Academic-community partnerships; community-based participatory research; community-engaged research; health disparities research; translational research.

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Conflict of interest statement

LEC provides consultancy for Forma Therapeutics, Pfizer, and Novartis and has research funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the National Institute for Nursing Research, and the National Institutes of Health, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Outcomes of community health grants (CHGs) and partnership development grants (PDGs) describe the overall outcomes of the microgrant programs with respect to the number of partnerships, numbers served, funding obtained post-award, and dissemination.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Overall satisfaction with the Community Health Grant (CHG) program illustrates the overall satisfaction of participants responding to the Community Health Grant evaluation survey (n = 57) in 2013 and 2018 across different domains.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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