A collaborative approach to enhance capacity and power for community-driven policy change: Project HEARD

Preprint Publication Date:
March 17, 2025
Publication Status:
Awaiting Publication
Manuscript PDF File:

**Forthcoming in Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP) 19.3. All rights reserved.**

ABSTRACT
Background: A longstanding community-based participatory research (CBPR) center designed Project Health Equity via Advocacy for Resources in Detroit (HEARD) to enhance the capacity, collective power, and impact of community-based organizationsworking in partnership with academics to advance policy change for health equity in their communities.

Objectives: We describe how Project HEARD supported community-academic teams to develop policy advocacy campaigns that included one-year goals for equity-focused change.

Methods: Project HEARD had the following main components: a cohort of community-academic teams, policy change workshops, policy advocacy grant, mentoring by community-academic pairs, and online strategy sessions. 

Lessons Learned: Supporting community-driven policy change requires recognizing and building on teams’ contexts, history, and expertise; tailoring support for teams with diverse policy experiences; and identifying additional ways to support sustainability.

Conclusions: Project HEARD’s approach and initial lessons learned can inform projects in diverse contexts aiming to amplify community-led policy change to support health equity.