PRESS RELEASE: National Commission Urges Action to Link Scholarship and
Communities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2005
For more information, contact Jen Kauper-Brown at 206-543-7954 or
[log in to unmask], or visit http://www.ccph.info or
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/kellogg3.html
The Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Health Professions
released today a national strategy for closing the gap between the promise
of health professional schools as community-engaged institutions and the
reality of how faculty members are typically judged and rewarded. The
Commission's report, "Linking Scholarship and Communities," contains
detailed recommendations for action by health professional schools and their
national associations that can support community-engaged scholarship and
cites promising practices that illustrate their implementation.
Convened by Community-Campus Partnerships for Health with funding from the
WK Kellogg Foundation, the Commission has taken a leadership role in
creating a more supportive culture and reward system for health professional
faculty involved in community-based participatory research, service-learning
and other forms of community-engaged scholarship in which faculty members
connect their scholarship with community needs and concerns. A list of
Commission members appears below.
Over the past decade, a steady stream of national organizations have been
recommending the community engagement of health professional schools as an
essential strategy for improving health professional education, achieving a
diverse health workforce, increasing access to health care, and eliminating
health disparities. Recruiting and retaining diverse community-engaged
faculty members is essential to developing and sustaining the community
partnerships that form the foundation for community-based teaching,
research, and service. Despite the expansion of community engagement in the
health professions, a troubling issue has arisen in many schools: Roles and
expectations of faculty are changing, but the faculty review, promotion, and
tenure system has not kept pace. Addressing this problem is the central
focus of the Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Health
Professions and its report released today.
"The W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports efforts to acknowledge and provide
incentives for health professional schools to become and remain engaged with
their communities," said Marguerite M. Johnson, Vice President for Programs
at the WK Kellogg Foundation. "We believe authentic partnerships between
health professional schools and communities will move this country closer to
changes in the health care system that will result in significant
improvements in access to health care, a more diversified health workforce,
and the elimination of ethnic and racial disparities in health. Changes must
be made in our systems and institutions to support all forms of
community-engaged scholarship."
The report examines a number of critical challenges that community-engaged
scholarship poses to the predominant paradigm of faculty incentives in
health professional schools. These include the tendency of faculty peers to
classify community-engaged work as service rather than to consider the
factors that might qualify the work as genuine scholarship, the under
valuing of the role of products of scholarship that are not in the form of
peer-reviewed journal articles, and the limited role of community partners
in faculty review, promotion and tenure processes.
The Commission recommends that:
1. Health professional schools should adopt and promote a definition of
scholarship that includes and values community-engaged scholarship.
2. Health professional schools should adopt review, promotion, and tenure
policies and procedures that value community-engaged scholarship.
3. Health professional schools should ensure that community partners are
meaningfully involved in review, promotion, and tenure processes for
community-engaged faculty members.
4. Health professional schools should educate the members of review,
promotion, and tenure committees about community-engaged scholarship and
prepare them to understand and apply the review, promotion, and tenure
guidelines in the review of community-engaged faculty.
5. Health professional schools should invest in the recruitment and
retention of community-engaged faculty.
6. Health professional schools should advocate for increased extramural
support for community-engaged scholarship.
7. Health professional schools should take a leadership role on their
university campuses to initiate or further campuswide support for
community-engaged scholarship.
8. National associations of health professional schools should:
- Adopt and promote a definition of scholarship within the profession that
explicitly includes community-engaged scholarship
- Support member schools that recognize and reward community-engaged
scholarship
- Advocate for increased extramural support for community-engaged
scholarship
9. Recognizing that many products of community-engaged scholarship are not
currently peer reviewed, a national board should be established to
facilitate a peer review process.
The Commission stresses that recognizing and rewarding community-engaged
scholarship in the health professions will require changes not only in the
wording of policies and procedures but, even more importantly, in the
culture of institutions and professions. Leadership is needed from both
academic institutions and the many external stakeholders that influence
their values and priorities, including but not limited to government,
philanthropy, peer-reviewed journals, accrediting bodies, and the
communities in which they reside and work. As a starting point, the
Commission suggests that health professional school administrators, faculty,
and members of review, promotion, and tenure committees review this report
in relation to the mission, vision, values, and policies of their
institutions and professions.
In announcing its report, the Commission also applauds the recent formation
of the Community-Engaged Scholarship for Health Collaborative. Organized by
Community-Campus Partnerships for Health with funding from the US Department
of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the
Collaborative is a group of health professional schools that aims to
significantly change faculty review, promotion and tenure policies and
practices to recognize and reward community-engaged scholarship - in the
participating schools and their peers across the country. The Collaborative
is already working to implement many of the Commission's recommendations.
The Commission is eager to work with health professional schools, their
national associations, and other interested stakeholders to support the
implementation of its recommendations, and welcomes inquiries and
suggestions on how best to facilitate such support.
The Commission report can be found on the Commission's website at:
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/kellogg3.html
Community-Campus Partnerships for Health welcomes comments on the
Commission's work. Questions and comments may be directed to program
director, Jen Kauper-Brown, by e-mail: [log in to unmask], by phone:
206/543-7954, or by mail: UW Box 354809, Seattle, WA 98195-4809.
Stay connected with the Commission and related work through the
Community-Engaged Scholarship electronic discussion group at
https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/comm-engagedscholarship
###
Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) is a nonprofit organization
that promotes health through partnerships between communities and higher
educational institutions. Founded in 1996, CCPH is a growing network of
over 1000 communities and campuses that are collaborating to promote health
through service-learning, community-based participatory research,
broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. These partnerships
are powerful tools for improving health professional education, civic
responsibility and the overall health of communities. CCPH advances its
mission through information dissemination, training and technical
assistance, research and evaluation, policy development and advocacy, and
coalition-building. Learn more about CCPH at www.ccph.info
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 "to help people help
themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to
improve their quality of life and that of future generations." To achieve
the greatest impact, the Foundation targets its grants toward specific
areas. These include: health; food systems and rural development; youth and
education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. Within these areas, attention
is given to exploring learning opportunities in leadership; information and
communication technology; capitalizing on diversity; and social and economic
community development. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin
America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana,
Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. Learn
more about the Foundation at www.wkkf.org.
Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Health Professions
Alex Allen
Vice President
Community Planning & Research
Isles, Inc.
Trenton, NJ
Barbara Brandt
Assistant Vice President for Education
University of Minnesota Academic Health Center
Minneapolis, MN
Marshall Chin
Associate Professor of Medicine
University of Chicago School of Medicine
Chicago, IL
Jay Chunn
Director/Principal Investigator
National Center for Health Behavioral Change
Urban Medical Institute
Morgan State University
Baltimore, MD
Amy Driscoll
Director
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
California State University-Monterey Bay
Seaside, CA
Eugenia Eng
Professor of Health Behavior and
Health Education
School of Public Health
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
Clyde Evans
Vice President
Association of Academic Health Centers
Washington, DC
Elmer Freeman
Executive Director
Center for Community Health Education Research and Service, Inc.
Boston, MA
Charles Glassick
Senior Associate Emeritus
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Spartanburg, SC
Lawrence W. Green
Director of Extramural Research
and Academic Linkages
Public Health Practice Program Office
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, GA
Jessie Gruman
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Health
Washington, DC
Susan Gust
GRASS Routes (Grassroots Activism, Scholarship and Sciences)
Minneapolis, MN
Laura Leviton
Senior Program Officer
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Princeton, NJ
Alonzo Plough
Director
Public Health-Seattle & King County
Seattle, WA
Shobha Srinivasan
Health Scientist Administrator
Division of Extramural Research and Training
Susceptibility & Population Health Branch
National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences
Research Triangle Park, NC
Susan Tortolero
Director
Texas Prevention Research Center
University of Texas Health Science Center
at Houston
Houston, TX
Pat Wahl
Dean
University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Seattle, WA
Terri Wright
Program Director, Health Policy
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Battle Creek, MI
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