The Effect of Minority Academic Leadership on the Culture Centeredness of Community Based Participatory Research Partnerships

Abstract

Community based participatory research (CBPR) approaches have been applied in public health research to address racial and ethnic health disparities. Previous work identifies minority investigators as having enhanced potential to conduct health research that is more appropriate, inclusive and representative of minority communities. This secondary data analysis of the Research for Improved Health Study explores the influence of minority Primary Investigators (PI) on the culture centeredness of CBPR projects. Federally funded community engaged research projects funded in 2009 were recruited (N= 333) and key research project personnel (N=450), project PIs (n=138) and community engaged research partners (n= 312), were surveyed on the dynamics and practices of their CBPR partnerships, including a culture centeredness scale which serves as an indicator of power sharing, community voice, and the grounding of the project in the community's culture. Linear regression analysis indicate that the difference in the mean culture centered scale score between projects lead by white and minority PIs is not significantly different from zero, and there is no significant association between the race of the PI and culture centeredness score, β=0.0002, p=0.99, (95% CI: -0.096, 0.097). The study hypothesis that projects lead by minority PIs would have higher culture centeredness scores than those lead by white PIs was not supported and these results suggest the minority status of the PI is not strongly related to the culture centeredness of community engaged research partnerships.