Community health promotion and the randomized controlled trial: approaches to finding common ground

The randomized controlled trial is the model against which research designs are judged. Concurrent with rising standards of evidence, however, is a trend toward greater inclusiveness in community-based research, exemplified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Prevention Research Centers, a nationwide network of academic-community partnerships engaged in community-based health promotion and disease prevention research. The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center developed a replicable process for devising randomized trials in the context of community collaboration. Several examples of trials developed this way and their interim results are provided.