Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) and Community-driven development (CDD) are research and development frameworks emphasizing collaborations with host communities as full and equal partners and rest control of all phases of the research process, development process, resource cultivation, and decision-making to groups in those communities. For the last three decades, CBPR and CDDD have increasingly been viewed as important strategies for creating sustainable interventions through community-driven research design, collaborative discourse, knowledge generation, and in intervention development. Unfortunately, process and outcomes evaluation of these efforts has lagged, but recent evidence suggests that while these projects create positive outcomes in some areas, they also neglect the complex systems of power that exist within communities (men versus women; less poor versus more poor; able bodied versus disabled), privilege the leadership of men, and create parallel structures that may alienate community leaders and create redundancies that inhibit sustainability. In this paper we report the initial results of a collaborative health initiative between community members and organizations in Baja Mexico and a predominantly Latinx women’s university in Los Angeles to implement CBPR and CDD around issues of health and disability in Baja’s San Quintín Valley. The project has worked to overcome the marginalization of women in designing and implementing the research while focusing on issues of disability. The project likewise is working to address power and culture differentials between Mexican and American collaborators, positing the American collaborators as students in the process as well as partners. We discuss preliminary findings and implications for pedagogy and development.

Presenters

Deborah Garcia Pedraza

Stephen Inrig
Director of Interdisciplinary Health Research; Professor of Political Science and History, Political Science and History, Mount Saint Mary's University, California, United States

Austin Robinson

Lia Roberts
Academic Director, Center for Global Initiatives, Mount Saint Mary

Estela Delgado Rodriguez

Pamela Aviles