Engaging a Community-Academic Partnership to Implement Community-Driven Solutions

Community engagement is a pivotal public health tool for addressing population health challenges and advancing health equity. Community-academic partnerships that use community-engaged approaches can prioritize community strengths and ensure that resources and interventions match local needs. In 2021-2022, a community-academic partnership, guided by the principles of community engagement, collaborated with residents of Milwaukee's Near West Side (NWS) to identify strengths and assets and prioritize actions to improve health and quality of life. To inform the development of a planned community resource center, residents were invited for group concept mapping (GCM). GCM includes idea generation, sorting and rating, and developing cluster maps. Residents (N = 165) generated 71 unique ideas in response to the question, "To make the Near West Side a healthier community we need _____." Residents sorted ideas into clusters based on conceptual similarity and prioritized the importance of each. Data were managed with The Concept System Global MAX Software. By using the 71 ideas, a cluster map with 9 domains best fit the data. Domains were high-quality and affordable housing, community-engaged public safety, health and wellness services, strong and inclusive neighborhoods, investments in young people, public infrastructure, sustainable businesses, alternative modes of transportation, and vibrant social spaces. Eight of the 9 domains were highly rated for importance. These domains became focus areas for our partnership's efforts to advance health and well-being in NWS. Our work highlights the significance of projects incorporating community engagement principles within the context of a community-academic partnership to generate mutually beneficial solutions that are strength-based and aligned with partners' priorities.