The Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative’s (SHERC) Community Engagement Core has opened the sixth round of its Community-Campus Partnership Support (CCPS) applications for funds of up to $5,000 per year — funding is dedicated to developing partnerships between NAU faculty and community organizations.
Applications are due by May 15 at 5 p.m. Partners must spend the funding on relationship building efforts and not on research activities.
Since July 2018, CCPS has funded 15 partnerships through bi-annual competitive application rounds totaling more than $65,599.
CCPS supports partnerships from all disciplines that can contribute to health equity. Funded CCPS partnership development projects have addressed maternal-child health, substance use disorders, disability inclusion and access, community access to healthy foods, disease prevention, rural health, mental health, foster care youth, care services coordination, environmental health, violence prevention, and housing.
According to Community Engagement Core (CEC) Lead Nicolette Teufel-Shone, associate director of the Center for Health Equity Research and professor in the Department of Health Sciences, a critical part of community partnerships with university investigators is developing trust, which takes an investment of time and often money to allow potential partners to meet face-to-face or even to travel to a conference together gaining information on common interests as a way to inspire collaborative projects that advance health equity.
“SHERC CEC has worked to make CCPS funding available to a wide range of partnerships,” said Teufel-Shone. “We encourage NAU faculty and their potential community partners to consider how their interests can contribute to achieving health equity.”
Michelle Parsons, assistant director, NAU’s Interdisciplinary Health Program and assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, received CCPS funding to develop a project with John Schuderer, chairperson of the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Yavapai County. The goal of their project,
“Contributing to the Formation of the Yavapai County Suicide Review Board,” was to strengthen a fledgling partnership between NAU and the Suicide Prevention Coalition to address midlife distress in the county.
“The CCPS award helped John and I think through the possibilities of a Yavapai County suicide review board, modeled on the Yavapai County overdose fatality review board,” Parsons said. “It also meant that we could both attend the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology where we learned about community suicide prevention interventions across the US and John was trained in psychological autopsy methods.”
Recipients of CCPS funding can design a proposal for future submission to the SHERC Pilot Project Program (PPP).
For more information, visit the CCPS Round 6 funding opportunity announcement for application guidelines and eligibility requirements on the CCPS website.
CCPS receives funding from the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative at Northern Arizona University (U54MD012388), which is sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).