The developmental stages of a community-university partnership: the experience of Padres Informados/Jovenes Preparados.
BACKGROUND
Strong and sustained community-university partnerships are necessary for community-based participatory translational research. Little attention has been paid to understanding the trajectory of research partnerships from a developmental perspective.


OBJECTIVE
To propose a framework describing partnership development and maturation based on Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development and describe how our collaboration is moving through those stages.


METHODS
Collaborators engaged in three rounds of iterative reflection regarding characteristics and contributors to the maturation of the Padres Informados/Jovenes Preparados (Informed Parents/Prepared Youth [PI/JP]) partnership.


CONCLUSIONS
Each stage is characterized by broad developmental partnership tasks. Conflict or tension within the partnership is often a part of achieving the associated tasks. The strengths developed at each stage prepare the partnership for challenges associated with subsequent stages.


CONCLUSIONS
This framework could provide a means for partnerships to reflect on their strengths and challenges at a given time point, and to help understand why some partnerships fail whereas others achieve maturity.
Michele L
ML
Allen
A Veronica
AV
Svetaz
G Ali
GA
Hurtado
Roxana
R
Linares
Diego
D
Garcia-Huidobro
Monica
M
Hurtado
D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D016730:Program Development; D011582:Psychological Theory; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical; D014495:Universities