title: Challenges and lessons learned in developing a community-based health survey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Collecting community-level data to inform health interventions and monitor health status is critical to improving community health and eliminating health disparities. Ideally, the process for designing and utilizing these data collection tools will include representation from community, service, and academic institutions. The process for incorporating these entities' diverse needs and perspectives, however, can be challenging.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper describes how a community-academic partnership designed a survey in 2003 and 2005 to examine factors influencing the health of residents in an urban city and surrounding county area.
  
  
  METHODS
  The partnership used community-based public health research principles to guide the development of the telephone surveys.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Through these two survey development processes, we learned three key lessons: To regularly examine our partnership and process; to communicate directly with and obtain the support of each individual partner; and to focus on building the capacity of the partners and partnership.
authors.affiliation: Genesee County Health Department.
authors.forename: Lauren A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Shirey
authors.forename: Derek M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Griffith
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brady
authors.forename: Daniel J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Kruger
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Morrel-Samuels
authors.forename: Ella
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Greene-Moton
mesh_terms: D019058:Community Networks; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires