The Community Research Collaborative (CRC) is an interdisciplinary group of university researchers and community leaders, representing diverse racial, cultural, and linguistic communities in the Salt Lake Valley. Through training, publications, events, grants, and our community review board, the CRC is working to advance community-based research in Utah and across the country.
The CRC emerged from conversations among faculty, students, and community partners at the University of Utah in 2017. Participants saw a need for an interdisciplinary network that could forge stronger relationships between academics and community-based practitioners, support community engaged scholars across their careers, and leverage the resources of higher education in support of local community organizing. Through ongoing processes of listening and dialogue we developed a shared mission and set of priorities for our work together. While initially launched in Salt Lake City, our network has begun to grow statewide through virtual and in-person activities.
The Community Research Collaborative is dedicated to advancing critical, action-oriented research for social justice.
The CRC is advocating for the implementation of systems to support CBR, beginning with our own home institution of the University of Utah. We convened a large group of engaged scholars from across the institution, and drafted a five-point plan for supporting, valuing, and resourcing CBR.
One of the CRC’s main goals is to create learning opportunities for students, community leaders, faculty, and other stakeholders. We want to help people expand their understanding of CBR, and build the skills and knowledge they need to carry out projects effectively and ethically.
The Community-Based Research (CBR) Grants Program at the University of Utah seeks to support research partnerships between academic researchers and community-based partners that inquire into and address real-world issues through an approach rooted in equity and inclusion.
When university researchers want to start a project, they must present their plan to the Institutional Review Board, which makes sure the research is designed in a way that is ethical, and that does more good than harm. But the IRB can only do so much.
The Community Research Collaborative facilitated a 9-month process that brought together community leaders and academic researchers at the University of Utah to co-develop guidelines for research partnerships. The group wanted to share best practices for CBR with both both community-based and university-based people who want to do collaborative research.
Originally named URBAN Utah, the CRC is a node of the national Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN). University Neighborhood Partners, the Bennion Center, and SPARC Lab at the University of Utah serve as backbone partners for the network, alongside university and community-based partners such as Club Ability, the Utah Pacific Islander Health Coalition, and Latino Behavioral Health Services.
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