Transforming Academic Public Health: Innovations in Community Engaged Practice and Curriculum Collaborations

This Research Topic is a follow up collection. Please see the first collection at: Transforming Academia for Equity.Based on the current published literature with topics reflecting a broad range of disciplines in culture, diversity, language, public health education and medicine there remains well-documented and overwhelming evidence that academic institutions have struggled historically to create transformative spaces for faculty, students, staff, and the communities that institutions serve. Ironically, faculty, students, staff, and communities bring to institutions lived experiences, wisdom, and knowledge that can contribute to the overall success of an institution’s mission and strategic priorities. Additionally, while there is broad academic acknowledgement that the solutions to community problems lie within the community, those perspectives are rarely included in faculty development, research portfolios and productivity, student training, reward systems for promotion and tenure and institutional definitions of scholarship. Moreover, there remains a tendency in the academy to work in silos, recreating knowledge, and solutions, rather than embracing perspectives and points of view by actively seeking insights from other fields. This Research Topic seeks to highlight successful outcomes from the previous collection and RWJF (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) initiative ‘Transforming Academia for Equity’ (link above), published recommendations from ASPPH’s Fostering Community Partnerships for a Healthier World: A Call to Action and Framework (2024) and early recommendations from Interfaith America’s Campus-Community Partnerships with demonstrable case studies, evidence-based programmatic success, and models of successful academic-community partnerships.In addition, this Research Topic seeks to provide a curated collection consisting of a generalizable and sufficiently interrogated knowledge base elevating the contributions of community-engaged scholarship, community-participatory action research, and academic-community partnerships to create transformative spaces in higher education. Therefore, a goal of this collection is to provide the framework for a set of training courses that extend the lens and reach of the manuscripts with asynchronous learning modules, case examples, lay abstracts with non-scientific content, tools for utilization by faculty, students, community partners, and a series of virtual learning options with webinars, podcasts, and narrated power-points. Specific areas of interest related to this Research Topic include but are not limited to:• The Intersection of Faith and Health: We invite submissions exploring how faith and health intersect through civic engagement and community partnership. We welcome three types of work: (1) studies of community-engaged initiatives at the faith-health interface; (2) exemplars of teaching, training, and service that advance religious pluralism; and (3) case-based modules demonstrating how authentic, sustained community partnerships shape thought, action, and outcomes. We especially encourage interdisciplinary work from health-related fields that prepares the public health workforce to intervene meaningfully at the community level. • The Co-Creation of Knowledge: Inviting submissions that highlight methods, frameworks and/or conceptual models depicting a process-driven approach to the co-creation of knowledge between academic and community partners. Exemplars should reflect conditions that impact mental health and wellness, physical health and well-being, social and psychological drivers of health, environmental health • Collaborative Capacity Building: Examples of programs, policies, procedures, or structured activities linked to changes in overall community health and well-being, community impact and sustained change based on the specific involvement of health departments, local, state, and federal government offices, NGO’s, hospital systems, justice systems, non-profit organizations, and or affiliate academic institutional partners such as institutes, learning centers, and libraries. • Innovating the Future Public Health Ecosystem with Transformative Academic-Practice Partnerships: Submissions that highlight the forward-looking, systems-oriented collaboration required to build the next generation workforce, research infrastructure, and practice environment. • Leading Public Health Through Change: Academic-Practice Strategies for Resilience: Centers on leadership models, change management, and crisis navigation where both academic and practice sectors support each other.• Linking Knowledge to Action: Public Health Responsiveness in Real Time: Exemplars of historic or contemporary examples of how academic and practice partners worked together to respond to emerging public health issues and evolving community needs with sustainable and generalizable outcomes. • Strengthening Public Health Narrative and Trust: Evidence-Based Messaging Across Sectors: Focuses on jointly countering politicization, protecting scientific integrity, and improving communication with communities and policymakers with community-led initiatives, campaigns, and solutions. Topic editors: Linda Alexander, Rafael Pérez Figueroa, Mieka Smart Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85594/transforming-academic-public-health-innovations-in-community-engaged-practice-and-curriculum-collaborations