**Forthcoming in Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP) 19.4. All rights reserved.**
ABSTRACT
Background: Navigating project funder requirements while collaborating with partners can be challenging. The Ohio implementation of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-funded Integrated Care for Kids model offers an example of making this work while improving well-being and decreasing costs for Medicaid-enrolled children.
Objectives: To reflect on the implementation experience when building a community partnership council (PC) and offer recommendations to address challenges.
Methods: Lead organization project staff and PC members completed online surveys to identify barriers/facilitators of collaboration. Thematic qualitative analysis was conducted.
Results: We identified funding limitations, project ambiguities, and power and resource imbalances as project-specific challenges. Other challenges included implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic and management within a complex state health policy landscape.
Conclusions: Building and sustaining community-academic partnerships while navigating funder requirements is challenging and require patience, trust, and intentional effort. We provide several recommendations to help others navigate challenges to enhance trust and collaboration.