Community Research Partnerships
Our Center for Population Health (CPH) researchers partner with Greater Lowell, Lawrence and Boston community organizations to address locally identified health priorities and translate research into meaningful action. We believe strong community research partnerships are built on shared goals, mutual expertise, open communication, and meaningful involvement throughout the research process.
Community partners bring essential knowledge about their communities, priorities, and lived experiences. CPH researchers bring research expertise, faculty and student engagement, data and analytic capabilities, and experience developing and evaluating public health programs. Together, we can develop projects that are both rigorous and relevant to the communities they are intended to serve.
We want to work with you!
CPH can partner with community organizations on:
- Community-engaged research: Developing research questions and projects collaboratively, with community perspectives informing the work from planning through dissemination
- Community needs assessment and community health improvement planning: Identifying health priorities, strengths, resources, and opportunities within communities
- Program evaluation: Designing evaluation plans and assessing program implementation, reach, effectiveness, and impact
- Data and analytic support: Helping organizations collect, analyze, interpret, and use data to inform programs and decision-making
- Intervention development and implementation: Working together to design, adapt, implement, and evaluate programs that respond to community needs
- Grant development: Partnering on grant proposals and identifying opportunities to build research and evaluation into community initiatives
- Dissemination and translation: Sharing findings in accessible and useful ways with community members, organizations, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders
What meaningful partnerships mean to us.
We work with partners to identify priorities together, define roles and expectations, develop approaches that are responsive to the community, interpret findings collaboratively, and determine how results can be shared and used.
Have an idea or community need?
If your organization has identified a health challenge, has data you would like help understanding, wants to evaluate a program, or is interested in developing a research or grant partnership, we would be happy to start a conversation.