This Model Community Partnership Agreement provides a template for academic researchers to use with community partners for Community Engaged Research projects. This model agreement is pre-approved for use by researchers within the UW School of Public Health and can be modified to fit the needs of academic-community partnership teams within other schools and universities. For an editable Word version of this document, please email BJ Cummings, UW EDGE Center Community Engagement Core co-manager at bjcumngs@uw.edu.
Why a Community Partnership Agreement?
Community Partnership Agreements can be especially important when partnering with community members or community-based organizations to study environmental health impacts that pose risks to human health and/or exacerbate health disparities in low-income communities and communities of color. Historical inequities in control over how research is structured, funded, and conducted have, at times, caused harm or damaged relationships with under-resourced communities where academic research is conducted. The Model Community Partnership Agreement seeks to develop transparent and equitable relationships between researchers and communities in ways that build community capacity, contribute to community empowerment, and redress the historic imbalance of power between academic researchers and the communities in which they conduct their work.