Colleen Reid, Elana Brief, and Robin LeDrew, Our Common Ground: Cultivating Women’s Health through Community Based Research. Vancouver, BC: Women’s Health Research Network, 2009.
This review does not deal with the content of this book. I’m simply not qualified to address that. But I am intrigued by the method of research and have found in this book one of the best descriptions around of community based research. This model of community engagement through questioning is a skill that every not-for-profit organization (actually, any organization that seeks to engage a community of clients or customers) should intentionally acquire and hone. There are lots of other names swirling around for this methodology of learning together and co-creating knowledge that is directly relevant to and resonant with a community’s needs, interests, and assets – participatory research, participatory action research, action research, etc. Community based research (I’ll use the standard short form of CBR from here on) is grounded in a way of engaging the world that honours the following principles and aspirations:
When used well, CBR brings the wisdom and street smarts of ordinary people into genuine dialogue with the knowledge and experience of experts, not valuing one perspective over the other, but helping those people engage together in the creation of new knowledge and practices. The richness and wisdom with which the authors and their collaborators apply CBR to women’s health is a superb example of how this method can help people co-create a better future. They include individual exercises and team exercises, highlight gender and women’s health examples, and point out when they are doubling back and reconsidering past decisions. Tools and resources are well described and illustrated. By drawing attention to these dimensions of CBR, the authors help readers absorb the process as well as the content. If you are interested in learning how to engage your community in a common search for a better future that positions your not-for-profit organization as a crucial catalyst for positive social change, finding an issue around which you can do CBR with them is a very wise strategy. And Our Common Ground is a very wise guide.
About Brian Fraser
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