When four of Ophelia Owens’ six children, one by one, developed respi- ratory ailments, she accepted the cause as hereditary. She and her mother had asthma themselves.
Then she became involved in Photo- voice, a project that issued disposable cameras to a group of Detroit moth- ers and asked them to take pictures around their neighborhood. The goal was to raise awareness of their sur- roundings, as a first step in making positive change.
Through the camera lens, Owens took a new view of her family’s illness—framed by the billows of smoke emitting from a nearby municipal waste incinerator.
It suddenly registered that many of her neighbors also used breathing devices, especially elderly persons and children.
“Some days I can ‘taste’ the air and know it will be a bad day for our asthma,” says Owens, one of thirteen parents and community activists who make up the Environmental Justice and Advocacy (EJA) committee created by the Detroit Public Schools.
"My thing now is gaining more knowledge, and then sharing that knowledge with other people so that we can make our neighborhoods safer and healthier,” she says. “I plan on being involved in the environmental justice movement for the rest of my life."
Discovering that her family’s illness was not the result of bad genes came as a relief at first. But this feeling was followed by anger and a sense of empowerment. Detroit has twelve hazardous waste sites, the second highest concentration of any city; childhood asthma in Detroit is twice the national average. Owens and the other EJA parents are channeling their frustration into action.
“My thing now is gaining more knowledge, and then sharing that knowledge with other people so that we can make our neighborhoods safer and healthier,” she says. “I plan on being involved in the environmental justice movement for the rest of my life.”
This is exactly the outcome Associate Professor Michael Spencer hoped for when he began laying the groundwork for this program in 2004, together with Bunyan Bryant (MSW ’65, PhD ’70), professor and head of the School of Natural Resources Environmental Justice Initiative. MSW students Joe Donlin and Amanda Garratt were involved in all aspects of the project, from recruitment and research design, to data collection and dissemination.
But it is the group of parents, whose children were enrolled in the Detroit Public Schools Early Childhood Education Prekindergarten Program, who form the nucleus of EJA. Taking photographs, they identified the needs and assets of their neighborhoods. They collected data, documented evidence, and shared their findings in a community forum on environmental justice this May. Building on this foundation, Spencer hopes to obtain grant money to train and pay the volunteers to become educators and activists.
The project is a classic example of community-based participatory research (CBPR), in that it emphasizes the role of community members as active partners in developing knowledge. The parents identified the concerns to be addressed—in this case, illegal dumping and air quality—and are taking action to improve their neighborhoods.
Collaboration is the key word found in the phrases that define CBPR: a collaborative relationship between academia and community groups in order to create new knowledge about a practical community issue and thus bring about social change.
Start Where People Are
The School of Social Work has a long history of applying CBPR and is involved in a wide range of projects using this research approach. Professor Barry Checkoway has employed it as one of his primary methodologies for more than twenty years. “Viewed this way, research is not just a means to develop and disseminate knowledge but is also part of the community development process. You start where people are, with the community as a unit of solution, and research becomes a form of practice.”
Checkoway taught the School’s first doctoral seminar on CBPR with an interdisciplinary grant from the Rackham Graduate School in partnership with other faculty from social work, sociology, and public health. He has authored countless journal articles and organized a national conference, which produced national standards for this form of research. He conducts training and workshops with community groups in regions as diverse as the Mississippi Delta, South Bronx, Chicago, and East Oakland, California.
While he works with people of all ages, he is particularly excited by the potential of young people creating community change through research:
- In East Oakland, young people documented the effects of gentrification on low-income neighborhoods and brought the information to city officials.
- In the South Bronx, students raised concern about stereotyping of youth of color by newspapers. Conducting a New York Times content analysis, they showed that White youth were portrayed as high achievers, while youth of color were portrayed in negative contexts. Although the Times editors rejected the data they collected, Checkoway notes that the participants gained skills and confidence from the experience.
- In Detroit, Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity brings together neighborhood and suburban youth, and research produced information that formed the basis for a Mosaic Youth Theater performance called “Speak for Yourself!” Young people created the interactive performance that they are now bringing to school assemblies and community centers. It is another example, Checkoway says, of participants developing and disseminating knowledge.
“We especially focus on youth of color in racially segregated and economically disinvested areas, because we believe it will strengthen personal, organization, and community capacity.”
Powered by volunteers, CBPR is not costly and the payoff is huge, he concludes. “Communities benefit from research that increases their participation in solving problems. It builds bridges across generations."
Moving from the Ivory Tower
The School is also building bridges between academia and the real world, as faculty lend their skills to a number of projects in urban Detroit.
One of the most ambitious is the Skillman Foundation Good Neighborhoods Initiative (GNI), a tenyear program in six selected Detroit neighborhoods aimed at enabling “all of the children and youth in those neighborhoods to grow up safe, healthy, educated, and prepared.” The neighborhoods were chosen based on their high concentration of children, multiple needs, and community commitment to addressing the problems, according to Foundation President and CEO Carol Goss (MSW ’72).
Some will argue that computers are available in schools and libraries, but in Detroit, schools and libraries are closing.
GNI was launched with a highly collaborative planning process involving the foundation, U-M SSW faculty, community organizations, and community members. Faculty members are helping the residents shape their priorities through focus groups, small meetings, and large community forums. They also provide training, mentoring, and grant-writing help. The School’s Technical Assistance Center supplies data retrieval and analysis, along with research expertise.
“We were looking for an organization that would bring not only academic support, including data interpretation, but a deep knowledge of Detroit neighborhoods,” Goss says.
“We are moving our research, classroom, and service activities from the ivory tower and positioning ourselves in the community,” says Dean Paula AllenMeares, principal investigator for the School’s work on the project. She emphasizes that it is very much a group effort; she, co-principal investigator Professor Larry Gant, Associate Professor Leslie Hollingsworth, and co-investigator Assistant Professor Trina Shanks work closely as a team. They recently submitted a proposal to extend the initial three-year, $900,000 grant.
In addition to many other faculty and technical staff, the project has also enlisted more than fifty students enrolled in a class Gant teaches in the U-M Detroit Center. “The students have been extremely wellreceived in the Good Neighborhoods Initiative and look forward to being involved throughout the life of the project,” he reports.
Professor Gant’s research interests range widely, from food distribution to public health. Another of his current projects is deploying and evaluating public use of wireless Internet access in two Detroit neighborhoods.
“There’s lots of talk about the omnipresence of wi-fi, but this is rarely true in low-income communities,” Gant asserts. “If present at all, it is usually limited to businesses, not neighborhoods. Some will argue that computers are available in schools and libraries, but in Detroit, schools and libraries are closing.”
So he set out to test whether it is possible to install Internet access in a city with lots of trees, where houses are old, with thick walls. And, would people use it? The answer is an emphatic “yes,” according to Denise Wellons-Glover, project manager for the Child Care Coordination Council of Detroit/ Wayne County.
“With unemployment so high, access to technology is paramount. Employers require resumes to be submitted on-line, so you can’t even apply for a job without the Internet.” Children are using computers for schoolwork, and senior citizens are taking classes to learn software and discover the Internet. People received free computers after completing training, Wellons-Glover says, and the interest continues to grow.
The experiment is intentionally small, sending strong signals across a one-third mile radius. The two sites are in close proximity and, together, reach about 60 families. The researchers would like to see the project expanded to reach other agencies and households.
With the two-year grant from the Knight Foundation ending in September, Wellons-Glover is aggressively seeking new funding. “But we can also transfer costs to the users. It would be about $10 per month,” she estimates, “equivalent to one can of soda and a bag of chips per week. I know we can convince people that the benefits are worth it.”
Organizing to End Domestic Violence
It’s one thing to convince community members to rally behind Internet access, safe neighborhoods, and environmental justice. Associate Professor Mieko Yoshihama has chosen a more controversial cause in New Visions: Alliance to End Violence in Asian and Asian-American Communities.
“Domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence, is widespread, but many people deny its existence or downplay its seriousness in their communities,” Yoshihama says.
The Asian population in southeast Michigan is vast and diverse, spanning many ethnicities and languages. Established in 2002, New Visions initially focused its efforts within the South Asian and Korean communities and is now expanding to reach other Asian groups.
“We strongly believe that community members themselves know best which strategies will meet with resistance and which will be effective. But we realize how volatile the subject matter is. Mass organizing could be counterproductive. We have been careful to involve our volunteers without jeopardizing their standing in the community,” Yoshihama says.
The project’s founders chose not to take a traditional reactionary approach like creating a crisis hotline or a shelter. “Responding to survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence is important. But we wanted to address the root causes—to prevent domestic violence from happening in the first place.
“One major approach we’ve identified together is the use of art, and especially theater,” she continues. “So after conducting a series of community assessments and in an effort to share the results in an interactive way, we’ve developed a skit. The volunteers have learned to be actors. They have created two 20-minute plays about domestic violence aimed at Korean and Southeast Asian audiences, as well as a third skit depicting the experience of an Asian woman who stays at a local shelter.”
As social workers and social scientists, we are trained to use theories and data. But the reality is, once we develop a plan, we need to continuously reassess, revise, and learn more.
The plays depict the way abusers, victims, and onlookers often fail to address the problem. “They may make excuses like ‘he’s not such a bad guy; he’s under stress; she probably deserved it,’” Yoshihama explains. “In some later versions of the skits, the audience is invited to ‘stop’ the action on stage and improvise a new script. The goal is not only to raise awareness and promote dialogue, but to change attitudes that condone violence against women.”
Yoshihama does not suggest that domestic violence is more or less prevalent among Asians than other ethnic groups, but it may be less visible. Asian and other marginalized women face more barriers such as language and immigration status, she contends. New Visions has a more recent spin-off called the Shanti Project, a word that means “peace and harmony” in Hindi. With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Gujarati community in southeast Michigan (originally from India) has been refining an intensive communications campaign against domestic violence. Using posters, public service announcements, seminars, film showings, and other events, the Shanti Project promotes open communication and mutual respect for all.
“Once again, community members have played a key role in developing the message and have continuously modified it based on interviews and focus groups,” she emphasizes.
“As social workers and social scientists, we are trained to use theories and data. But the reality is, once we develop a plan, we need to continuously reassess, revise, and learn more. This process is what makes community-based research effective.”
The volunteers in the two projects come from all walks of life—a retired teacher, a homemaker, a student, an engineer. “They haven’t had any experience in community-based research, which is challenging for them and us,” Yoshihama remarks. “But they are excited and committed. They are eager to make a difference.”
CBPR—The Wave of the Future?
The projects described here only begin to convey the scope of community-based participatory research at the School. The partnerships between SSW faculty and community organizations also include Professor Lorraine Gutiérrez’s collaborations with Detroit’s MOSAIC Youth Theater and People’s Community Service to expand their arts programming (see story on page 17). Further examples are Associate Professor Edie Kieffer’s Healthy Mothers on the Move (Healthy MOMs) and Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH), healthy lifestyle interventions aimed at reducing obesity and diabetes.
In its early stages is a new project that can improve job opportunities for persons with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Assistant Professor Joe Himle is developing an intervention for SAD using cognitive behavioral therapy. He found an ideal research population in JVS, a large vocational rehabilitation service in urban Detroit reaching some 27,000 clients per year in its counseling, career development, and employment workshops.
“A growing number of studies have identified SAD as a significant mental health problem for the chronically unemployed,” he reports. “You might call it a form of extreme shyness, a fear of situations in which you’ll be exposed to scrutiny, like going out on a date or giving a speech—or having a job interview.”
Twelve to 15 percent of the population experiences this disorder at some point in their lives, but JVS has noted a higher-than-average rate among its clients. Social anxiety is a particular disadvantage since many job opportunities are in the service industry, where all employees are expected to engage in customer relations.
Himle is shaping the intervention, drawing upon interviews with JVS administrators, clinical staff, support staff, and clients. “The idea is to train existing vocational rehabilitation professionals at JVS to conduct workshops that fit within the agency’s culture. They are closely involved with developing the treatment design that they will be delivering, which will be given a user-friendly title like ‘working with people on the job.’”
It is anticipated that the newly formed intervention will reduce stress during job interviews and improve chances of both finding work and staying employed. “If proven successful, this design can sustain itself for years,” Himle says, “and be duplicated around the country.”
Long utilized by the field of social work, CBPR is gaining favor in medicine and public health, where the concept of actively involving a community in the research process seems logical and advantageous. But it is still an uphill battle, Barry Checkoway attests.
“The primary culture in academia holds that scientists must remain neutral in order to retain their objectivity,” he explains. “Researchers are conditioned to believe that community participation is the antithesis of scientific research. It is more prevalent than ever, but it still represents more of a trickle than a wave.
“But the benefits are hard to ignore. Community participation in research is a way to actively involve people, to build their organizational capacity, to empower them and change society for the better. Knowledge development should be a democratic process,” Checkoway declares. “People have a basic right to participate in the research that affects their lives.”
—Pat Materka, a former U-M staff member, is a freelance writer who owns and operates the Ann Arbor Bed and Breakfast.
In June University of Michigan News Service released a video on the Head Start environmental justice project. See www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5918. Ed.