Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: Advancing Social and Health Equity ed. by Nina Wallerstein et al. (review)

For readers who turned to this book review for the bottom line, let me state it upfront. Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: Advancing Social and Health Equityis an essential resource for both novice and experienced community- based participatory research (CBPR) practitioners and a comprehensive text for teaching CBPR. The paragraphs below attempt to explain why.

That the book is in its third edition in 15 years speaks volumes both in terms of the maturity of the field and the continuing demand for guidance from its leading experts. The title itself reflects the field's evolution, going from simply Community-Based Participatory Research for Healthto a focus on process and outcomes to the current emphasis on action that dismantles injustice and achieves equity, not only in communities but also in the conduct of the research itself. Researchers who view CBPR as a strategy for recruiting minority participants into clinical trials will quickly realize from the book's Introduction that their understanding is not only wrong but completely antithetical to its core tenets. Readers of this third edition will be challenged at every turn to interrogate their own practice to ensure they are maximizing the community impacts of the research and not inadvertently contributing along the way to the inequitable conditions that CBPR aims to upend. For example, case studies illustrate how racism, power, and privilege can manifest within a CBPR partnership; how to anticipate and recognize such situations; and, most important, how to collaboratively resolve them. One of the book's appendices calls on CBPR practitioners to examine their individual power and privilege through a structured process of critical self-reflection, and another invites cultural humility.

The decade since the book's last edition has witnessed an explosion both in studies employing CBPR approaches and in studies ofCBPR. The editors have done a tremendous job of integrating this evidence base into the book, including our latest understanding of the ingredients of a high-functioning CBPR partnership and its impact on individual and community capacity, health outcomes, and policies. Partnership principles and a conceptual framework for CBPR are presented not as set in stone, but as adaptable tools for planning, collective evaluation, and ongoing reflection. Case studies provide just enough context and detail to demonstrate the critical issues that arise in CBPR partnerships and extract generalizable lessons learned. Chapters that identify promising practices derived from an array of participatory intervention designs in diverse settings and communities help readers to understand the complete cycle from partnership formation to improved health outcomes and policy change. Four chapters are devoted to ways in which CBPR can impact policies that advance such goals as environmental justice, food security, an equitable criminal justice system, and healthy urban housing and public space. A conceptual model for understanding the pathways between CBPR and healthy public policy provides a helpful way to articulate a partnership's policy goals and develop strategies for achieving them. The importance of evaluating CBPR partnerships and outcomes is evident from the attention paid to the topic both in the main body of the book and in appendices that cite publicly available and validated assessment instruments.

This updated edition also includes for the first time access to a companion website featuring lecture slides of conceptual and partnership evaluation content and resources from appendices that can be used as tools for classroom teaching and for individual and partnership-focused professional development. Questions posed to readers at each chapter's conclusion help to reinforce main points and prompt critical analysis and reflection. Although these can be answered by the solitary reader, they lend themselves well to group discussion in a classroom or within a CBPR partnership. Responding to the question of whether having community residents take the lead in data collection...