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Question: I'm a postdoctoral research fellow at City of Hope (a cancer center in Los Angeles) in the Center of Community Alliance for Research and Education (CCARE). We are planning a conference where we are going to invite members of the various community organizations, with whom we have a collaborative relationship, to present their work on our campus. We want to provide training for participating organizations to assist and guide them in developing their conference abstracts and their research posters. Our hope is that this can be the foundation for an ongoing collaboration regarding engagement in a dialogue about community-based research, as well as provide them with practical skills in developing research presentations (abstracts, posters, grants, manuscripts). Any advice on how to approach this or where we can obtain resources to teach to our community partners as they develop their abstracts and posters? Thank you!

Answer:

Dear Dr. Chavez,

Thanks for contacting The Community Tool Box. Your initiative sounds exciting.

In regard to how to approach the project, the first step you take might be to assess the current capacity of the participating organizations to prepare such presentations. That will accomplish two things: (1) it will give you an idea of how much and what type of capacity building assistance they will need; (2) it might help you to identify some existing assets or resources to facilitate the project. It will also be an opportunity to introduce the idea to them. You can do it quickly and most easily by having a couple of undergraduate or graduate students conduct telephone interviews with key individuals at each organization. You can also gauge the interest level and willingness to engage in such a collaboration at the same time. One incentive might be to provide them with the finished poster ready to hang. You might begin the process with one large group meeting to kick off the initiative, and then offer some training in a group format, supplemented by individual, hands on assistance for those who need it.

If it is monetary resources you need, perhaps you can find a local foundation or business that would be willing to provide some funding. You might solicit small donations (that can add up) from local medical centers or other institutions that perhaps give small amounts of money. If it is expertise you are in need of, tap into local graduate schools for doctoral students who may need to do some type of internship in the community (such as a school of public health) or who would be interested in getting the community experience. ~~Once you finish building the capacity of the first cohort of organizations, you may find some that are interested in sharing their new expertise with other organizations and can utilize a "Train the Trainer" model.As far as finding materials to faciliate the capacity building, Chapter 42 has information about getting grants and preparing funding proposals. For materials on how to prepare a poster, here are some links to helpful sites below, and there are many more out there.

http://guides.nyu.edu/posters

http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/index.html

http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign

We hope this is helpful to get you started. If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact us again.

The Community Tool Box Advisor

Question Date: Mon, 12/15/2014