The Empowerment Theory-based Community Forum as a CBPR Dissemination and Translation Method

Hallmarks of community-based participatory research (CBPR) include collaboration between community and academic partners throughout all stages of research and ensuring progression from knowledge generation to action. To advance health equity, it is imperative to align dissemination and translation methods with these foundational CBPR principles.

Our long-standing CBPR partnership developed, implemented, and refined an efficient, empowerment theory-based community forum method for disseminating and translating findings into actionable next steps that is highly inclusive of community members and community organizations.

At forums, attendees include CBPR partnership members and others such as lay community members, health service providers, community organization representatives, and academic researchers. Attendees review findings and participate in large and small group discussions using theory-based triggers in an eight-step method to develop practice, research, intervention, and policy priorities and recommendations. This method has been used to disseminate and translate findings from a range of studies, including 1) a qualitative study exploring sexual risk among racially and ethnically diverse gay, bisexual, queer, and other men who have sex with men (GBQMSM); 2) a mixed-methods study on the impact of immigration enforcement on Latine health; and 3) a study to develop and test an intervention to address HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) disparities and social determinants of health among young GBQMSM and transgender women of color.

The empowerment theory-based community forum method fulfills an important role within CBPR. There is great potential to apply lessons learned about this method to disseminate and translate future study findings into concrete next steps.