title: Rural Embedded Assistants for Community Health (REACH) network: first-person accounts in a community-university partnership.
abstract: Community research and action projects undertaken by community-university partnerships can lead to contextually appropriate and sustainable community improvements in rural and urban localities. However, effective implementation is challenging and prone to failure when poorly executed. The current paper seeks to inform rural community-university partnership practice through consideration of first-person accounts from five stakeholders in the Rural Embedded Assistants for Community Health (REACH) Network. The REACH Network is a unique community-university partnership aimed at improving rural health services by identifying, implementing, and evaluating innovative health interventions delivered by local caregivers. The first-person accounts provide an insider's perspective on the nature of collaboration. The unique perspectives identify three critical challenges facing the REACH Network: trust, coordination, and sustainability. Through consideration of the challenges, we identified several strategies for success. We hope readers can learn their own lessons when considering the details of our partnership's efforts to improve the delivery infrastructure for rural healthcare.
authors.affiliation: University of Texas School of Public Health, El Paso Regional Campus, El Paso, TX, USA. louis.d.brown@uth.tmc.edu
authors.forename: Louis D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Theodore R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Alter
authors.forename: Leigh Gordon
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Marilyn A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Corbin
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Flaherty-Craig
authors.forename: Lindsay G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: McPhail
authors.forename: Pauline
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nevel
authors.forename: Kimbra
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shoop
authors.forename: Glenn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sterner
authors.forename: Thomas E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Terndrup
authors.forename: M Ellen
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Weaver
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D019058:Community Networks; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006266:Health Education; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012424:Rural Population; D014495:Universities