title: Unpacking University-Community Partnerships to Advance Scholarship of Practice.
abstract: Today, more than ever, occupational therapists are engaged in close partnerships with community organizations and community settings such as service agencies, refugee and immigrant enclaves, and faith-based organizations, to name a few, for the purpose of engaging in scholarship of practice. However, we know little about the views of community partners regarding the development and sustainability of university-community partnerships. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, we will describe a pilot study in which we gathered qualitative data from community partners engaged in scholarship of practice with faculty and students, regarding their views about benefits of partnerships, challenges, and characteristics of sustainable partnerships. Second, based on this pilot study and extensive experience of the authors, we propose a revised version of a partnerships model available in the literature. We illustrate the model through examples of the authors' collective experiences developing and sustaining successful university-community partnerships.
authors.affiliation: a 1 Department of Occupational Therapy , University of Illinois at Chicago , Chicago , IL , USA.
authors.forename: Yolanda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Suarez-Balcazar
authors.affiliation: a 1 Department of Occupational Therapy , University of Illinois at Chicago , Chicago , IL , USA.
authors.forename: Mansha Parven
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Mirza
authors.affiliation: b 2 Rangos School of Health Sciences , Duquesne University , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.
authors.forename: Anne Marie Witchger
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Hansen
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D009788:Occupational Therapy; D010865:Pilot Projects; D016730:Program Development; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical; D014495:Universities
keywords: Community partnerships; Engaged research; Scholarship of practice