ARTICLEHEALTH PROMOTION PRACTICE / MONTH YEAR43July Developing Community Health Promotion Interventions: Selecting Partners and Fostering Collaboration

Although an often desired goal, true partnership between community members and university research-ers can be difficult to achieve. Strategies implemented in a diabetes prevention and control program in a Latino community may be effective in overcoming hur-dles to collaborative research. The development of selection criteria can be useful for objectively choosing a community organization as a partner agency. The implementation of formal partnership principles is pro-posed as a strategy for building a successful partner-ship. Partnership principles are a powerful mechanism to assure ethical relations between collaborators. As a strategy for process evaluation, they can help organize data on the extent to which intent has translated into action. They provide a structure for project stability that can outlast individual commitments and a mechanism to keep project commitment on course and maintain active engagement