Advancing research through a university-community partnership

Human service organizations are uniquely positioned given their scope of practice and access to consumers with the widest range of needs to significantly increase the national capacity for research if they were effectively equipped with the knowledge, skills and funding to integrate research and development into their on-going organizational activities. A university-community research partnership is one approach to achieving this goal. This presentation describes the Hillside/University at Buffalo (HUB) Research Model, a formal research partnership between Hillside Family of Agencies (HFA) in Rochester, NY and the Buffalo Center for Social Research (BCSR) at the University at Buffalo. The HUB Research Model combines the practice expertise and research subject access of HFA with the BCSR research expertise and resources to develop collaboratively a vibrant research partnership based on community-based participatory research principles that garners the strengths and assets of both partners to realize a true research to practice and practice to research agenda. The HUB Research Model is based on CBPR principles that hold much promise for decreasing the 17-year delay between development of new knowledge and the availability of that knowledge at the practice setting. When researchers and practitioners form a research partnership whereby each are contributing members in the development of research questions, methodological design, data collection and analysis, as well as dissemination of findings everyone benefits in a variety of ways. Subsequently, when you train MSW and doctoral students within the HUB Research Model a new generation of practitioners and scholars are developed with knowledge of CBPR and an understanding and value of community-based research. Potential benefits abound for clients, agencies, universities and students alike.