Food For a Long Life: A Local Case Study of Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR)

The Food For a Long Life (FFLL) project is a five-year, USDA-CYFAR (Children, Youth and Families At-Risk) Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) project that aims to reduce food insecurity among young children and their families living in one Columbus, Ohio neighborhood and one Virginia community. Specifically, the FFLL project seeks to use intergenerational strategies to improve access to, consumption of and knowledge of healthful food in the target communities. The FFLL project team just completed its planning year, year one of the five-year project, during which stakeholders were identified and engaged in the CBPAR process. The following principles of CBPAR (Israel et al., 2000) were applied to guide the project planning efforts: Acknowledge the community as a unit of identity. Build on strengths and resources within the community. Facilitate a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of research. Involve an empowering and power sharing process that attends to social inequalities. Foster co-learning and capacity building among partners. Integrate a balance between knowledge generation and intervention for the mutual benefit of all partners. Focus on the local relevance of public health problems and ecological perspectives that attend to the multiple determinants of health. Involve systems development using a cyclical and iterative process. Disseminate results to all partners and involve them in the wider dissemination of results. Use a long-term process and commit to sustainability. The Ohio FFLL project team began the planning year by hosting a project kick-off meeting for research team members and pre-identified stakeholders. During the first quarter of the year, existing community data was gathered and listening sessions were held with stakeholders. In the second quarter, the research team analyzed and themed the data. Themes were then communicated to interested stakeholders via a community conversation (i.e. search conference meeting) and three monthly Discover Council meetings. Currently, the Discovery Council is meeting quarterly to inform the project's intervention strategies. The Discovery Council research team members include a dietitian, a gerontologist, experts in intergenerational programming, a food security expert, a technology expert and evaluation specialists. These team members come as students, staff and faculty working for OSU Extension and the Ohio State College of Social Work. Also represented on the Discovery Council are community members, caregivers and parents; early childcare education providers, adult care providers, employees from the public health department, employees from the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, and representatives from various other nonprofit organizations. The make-up of the Discovery Council allows for planning that draws on both subject-area expertise and community knowledge, resulting in plans that are feasible, sustainable, desired and relevant.AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Jenny Lobb, Educator, The Ohio State University Extension, lobb.3@osu.edu (Corresponding Author); Shannon Jarrott, Professor, Ohio State College of Social Work; Holly Dabelko-Schoeny, Associate Professor, Ohio State College of Social Work; Elizabeth Speidel, Intergenerational Program Manager, Champion Intergenerational Center.The Food For a Long Life (FFLL) project is a five-year, USDA-CYFAR (Children, Youth and Families At-Risk) project that aims to reduce food insecurity among young children and their families living in one Columbus, Ohio neighborhood and one Virginia community. Specifically, the FFLL project seeks to use intergenerational strategies to improve access to, consumption of and knowledge of healthful food in the target communities. The project uses the Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) process to engage various stakeholders in the target communities to plan for and achieve feasible, sustainable and desired outcomes. The Ohio research team will share how CBPAR principles were applied in the planning year of the research project to inform intervention strategies for the current project year