Building Community-Academic Partnerships in Grant-Funded Projects: Perspectives From the Field

Navigating project funder requirements while collaborating with partners can be challenging. The Ohio implementation of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-funded Integrated Care for Kids model offers an example of making this work while improving well-being and decreasing costs for Medicaid-enrolled children.

To reflect on the implementation experience when building a community partnership council and offer recommendations to address challenges.

Lead organization project staff and partnership council members completed online surveys to identify barriers/facilitators of collaboration. Thematic qualitative analysis was conducted.

We identified funding limitations, project ambiguities, and power and resource imbalances as project-specific challenges. Other challenges included implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic and management within a complex state health policy landscape.

Building and sustaining community-academic partnerships while navigating funder requirements is challenging and require patience, trust, and intentional effort. We provide several recommendations to help others navigate challenges to enhance trust and collaboration.