CAREER: The Science of Strengths-Based Communities

This CAREER project studies the impacts of a strengths-based approach to communities. The research seeks to operationalize, develop, and test a community-driven unit of measurement of community strength. The research develops a data-driven conceptual framework that provides an understanding of the needs of communities over time. Broader impacts of the research include the development of a validated and generalized toolkit to measure community strength for use in clinical and educational settings. The collaborative research design strengthens relationships between anthropological, public health and medical scientists. The research also develops the scientific workforce through training of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in mixed methods research and collaborative science. To understand and measure the impacts of a strengths-based community approach and to develop a validated toolkit, the investigators, in years 1-2 of the project, use a mixed methods approach for data collection and validation. This includes focus groups and semi-structured interviews, qualitative tracking of community strategies, and a measurement tool that progressively tracks community outcomes over time. In years 3-5 of the project, investigators create and test a curriculum developed with community partners that will be piloted in medical schools and public health contexts. The impact of the curriculum will be evaluated using an existing evaluation toolkit and the final product will be made freely available via open-access venues for use by all communities and educational settings. Research findings advance scholarship in medical anthropology and public health. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.