Mobilizing Partnerships for Social Change

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Pre-Conference Workshops are scheduled on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 to provide participants with in-depth knowledge and skills in a specific content area. Enrollment is limited and is based on a first-come first-served basis. The workshops are scheduled from 12 noon to 4:00pm, with lunch included from 12 noon to 1:00pm. There is a $50 registration fee for the Pre-Conference Workshops.

If you can’t attend the entire conference, the Pre-Conference Workshops are an excellent professional development opportunity, especially for those who live within driving distance of Toronto. To register, just use the Online Registration Form and only select a Pre-Conference Workshop.

Click on a pre-conference workshop to view a complete description.

• Asset-Based Community Development - A Tool for Teaching and Learning
• Build Successful Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships!
• Delivering on the Promise: Using Community-Based Research to Affect Public Policy
• Highlighting the Scholarly Merit of Knowledge Transfer/Exchange and Community Engagement Activities in Your Promotion Portfolio
• Applying a Population Health Perspective to Health Planning and Decision-Making
• Essentials for Effective Community Service-Learning Initiatives

Asset-Based Community Development - A Tool for Teaching and Learning

Description

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), described by McKnight and Kretzman, begins with the assumptions that communities have assets, and that change comes from the inside-out, as communities mobilize their capacities. The principles of ABCD are congruent with principles of authentic partnerships and with the purpose of service-learning (to learn from inside a community). ABCD is a key tool for teaching, so that students' learning, discovery and engagement in communities is based on sound principles. Consistent with adult learning theory, we will use active techniques, and a learner-centered approach. The workshop will be broken into segments. We will begin with participants' own experiences and questions about ABCD, and use data from their settings to illustrate points. Didactic sessions will be brief. The majority of the workshop will involve small groups in which participants will use tools to map a community or develop teaching strategies. De-briefing sessions will be participant-lead.

Presenters

Barbara Gottlieb is a Primary Care Internist at Brookside Community Health Center, where she has worked since 1981. In addition to her patient care responsibilities, she is responsible for developing clinical and public health programs and coordinates medical student and resident teaching activities at the health center. She also coordinates research activities at the health center, and serves as a liaison to academically based researchers and research projects. She is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, where she teaches in several courses and is a member of the Division of Service Learning. She is a faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she teaches in the interdisciplinary program in Women, Gender and Health. She also teaches a practicum course for MPH students. She serves as advisor and mentor to medical and public health students who are interested in the health of women and underserved communities. She is also a member of the CCPH board of directors.

Elizabeth Miller is Assistant Professor in Pediatrics, and Assistant Director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities, U.C. Davis School of Medicine, in addition to Research Consultant at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Trained in medical anthropology as well as Internal Medicine/Pediatrics, Dr. Miller’s qualitative research has included examination of gendered risk for HIV among women in Japan (victims of sex trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence) in Japan, social norms and peer coercion to engage in purchasing of sex among men in Japan, and dating violence, health risks and health care service acquisition among adolescent girls in the United States. She is currently funded by the William T. Grant Foundation to conduct a mixed methods study of adolescent dating violence in the clinic setting; additionally, she serves as the lead qualitative researcher on Dr. Silverman’s CDC-funded study assessing sexual and reproductive health risk among female adolescent victims of IPV and male adolescent perpetrators of IPV. In a previous position, she served as the Director of Community Based Research and Evaluation for the Massachusetts General Hospital Community Benefit Program, where she directed program evaluation and community based participatory research projects that focused on youth substance use, teen pregnancy, gender-based violence prevention and intervention, and refugee/immigrant health.

Jean Hess is Program Manager for Community Service and Associate Director for the Division of Service Learning at Harvard Medical School. She brings to these positions over 20 years of experience in community-based, nonprofit agencies in a wide variety of roles: from executive director of an AIDS service organization, to directing public health programs in a community health center, to teaching health topics in ESOL classes, to being an HIV test counselor to teaching self-defense and rape prevention and awareness. Her experience working on “both sides of the fence” brings a fresh perspective to helping create active and sustainable community campus partnerships.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to…

• Understand and explain the significance of an asset-based approach to community assessment as opposed to a problem-based approach.
• List and describe the categories of assets and be able to use one or several ABCD tools to comprehensively map a community's assets.
• Write learning objectives and describe several strategies for teaching ABCD in their communities and institutions

Build Successful Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships!

Description

Over the last decade we have developed alliances, networks and partnerships in our sectors and communities. However, we often don't understand how they are very different than the organizations we work in. This interactive workshop is designed as an introduction to the essential principles and frameworks of building successful alliances, coalitions and partnerships.

Presenter

Joan Roberts is Director of Capacity Building at the Wellesley Institute. She has over 20 years of experience managing projects, developing organizations and working with different levels of government. She is a former city councillor and prior to joining the Wellesley Institute ran her own consulting and training practice for clients in government and the not-for-profit sector. She holds a Masters Degree in Organization Development and has designed and delivered workshops on advocacy, economic development, multi-stakeholder processes and governance. She co-authored 2 articles in the Fieldbook on Collaborative Work Systems published by Jossey Bass in 2003. Her book Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships: Building Collaborative Organizations was released by New Society Publishers in 2004.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to…

• Identify the 7 common misconceptions of alliances, coalitions and partnerships.
• Describe the top 5 challenges and benefits.
• Develop successful partnerships using a 6 step framework.

Delivering on the Promise: Using Community-Based Research to Affect Public Policy – Limited to 40 participants

Description

Much of community-based research (CBR) is driven by trying to find concrete solutions to crucial problems facing communities. There is tremendous potential in using the knowledge gained from this research to affect public policy in community-orientated and progressive directions. But to realize this potential, the research has to get to those in power in ways they can understand, and it needs to be ‘translated’ into the kinds of terms that policy makers work within and can act on. This workshop is about introducing knowledge mobilization and policy analysis techniques so that CBR practitioners can have more policy impact.

Presenter

Bob Gardner is Director of Public Policy at the Wellesley Institute. He was Director of Research and Information Services at the Ontario Legislative Assembly until 2003, leading a multi-disciplinary branch providing confidential, non-partisan research services to MPPs and legislative committees, and a wide range of research and information products on a comprehensive Intranet. He was subsequently a Senior Associate with the Canadian Parliamentary Centre and undertook extensive Canadian and international consulting for the non-profit sector. Bob has a Ph.D. in political sociology, taught at several Ontario universities and has been active for many years in HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and other community groups.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to…

• Get the research findings to those who need to know about them – and can act on them.
• Identify the policy implications of the findings and develop concrete/workable policy alternatives.
• Develop effective strategies and tactics for getting policy alternatives into action.

Highlighting the Scholarly Merit of Knowledge Transfer/Exchange and Community Engagement Activities in Your Promotion Portfolio

Description

This pre-conference workshop will guide faculty members who regularly practice non-traditional forms of scholarship (such as knowledge transfer/exchange or community engagement) in how to prepare strong portfolios for promotion and tenure. Faculty in nearly all disciplines and professions are now developing innovative ways to make their work relevant, usable, and accessible. It is widely acknowledged that this new approach is necessary for knowledge to improve health outcomes; however, universities have been slow to adapt their faculty evaluation processes to recognize the new forms of scholarship. While work goes on to change policies and develop new methods of evaluation, faculty can get credit for their non-traditional scholarly work by improving how they present it in their portfolios.

This interactive workshop will combine presentations and small group work. The workshop leaders will present strategies, resources and examples for preparing a strong career statement, curriculum vitae, teaching portfolio, and supporting letters from external peer reviewers and non-academic partners. We will also focus on strategies for working with mentors and adapting non-traditional scholarship to traditional tenure and promotion criteria. Workshop materials will include sample portfolios and tools developed by Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation.

Presenters

Sherril B. Gelmon is Professor of Public Health in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University (PSU). Sherril has built much of her scholarship on work related to the scholarship of teaching and the scholarship of engagement. She was one of the first faculty tenured and promoted to full professor at PSU under the new guidelines which embrace a broad vision of scholarship. As a result, she has become increasingly interested in how faculty shape their scholarship with respect to community engagement, and has been studying, writing and presenting on this topic since 2001. As a CCPH senior consultant, she currently serves as evaluator for the Community-Engaged Scholarship for Health Collaborative, a group of health professional schools in the US that are working to build capacity for community-engaged scholarship within their institutions and their peers nationally. Sherril is an alumna of the Pew Health Policy Fellows Program, and received her doctorate in health policy from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, her masters in health administration from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and undergraduate degrees in physical therapy from the Universities of Toronto and Saskatchewan.

Chris McCutcheon is the senior program officer for organizational capacity development at the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. The program aims to improve Canada's health system research capacity by encouraging environments that are more supportive of the unique scholarly activities fundamental to applied health services research, such as knowledge transfer and exchange. The program publishes "Recognition," a series of monographs that highlight tools, tips and promising practices for recognizing and rewarding applied work in universities, including in the tenure and promotion review process. Chris holds a masters degree in social and political thought from York University.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to…

• Identify when a knowledge transfer/exchange or community engagement activity is scholarly.
• Describe the scholarly merit and impact of their own knowledge transfer/exchange and community engagement activities in a promotion portfolio.
• Document evidence of the impact of these activities.

Applying a Population Health Perspective to Health Planning and Decision-Making

Description

This introductory pre-conference workshop provides participants with a basic understanding of determinants of population health and some of the tools available to facilitate the application of a population health perspective to health planning. The course is participatory and includes the opportunity to work in small groups. This basic workshop is intended as an introduction for those who are interested in learning about a population health approach.

Presenter

Keith Denny is a Consultant in Policy Analysis with the Canadian Population Health Initiative (CPHI) at CIHI. Over the last 15 years he has worked as a health sciences librarian, community health educator and hospital manager. In 2006 he completed a PhD in the department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. His work at CPHI includes policy analysis, researching and writing for CPHI reports and the development and delivery of education related to population health.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to

• Recognize the basic concepts of population health.
• Identify and describe key social determinants of health.
• Identify and describe key Canadian sources of population health data.

Essentials for Effective Community Service-Learning Initiatives

Description

Community Service-Learning (CSL) is an educational approach that integrates service in the community with intentional learning activities. Within effective CSL efforts, members of both educational institutions and community organizations work together toward outcomes that are mutually beneficial. This session will cover key elements essential to clearly understanding the concept and practice of CSL. In addition, information gathered through an environmental scan commissioned in the Fall of 2005 to explore CSL in Canada, will provide participants with a glimpse into the state of the field nationally and examples of some exemplary partnerships and programs.
A moderated panel of experienced student, faculty member, community agency staff person, and a community/campus liaison staff person will share their experiences of participating in CSL and respond to questions from participants. In addition, short presentations using case studies will trigger discussion and equip participants to complete design worksheets. Participants will explore issues relevant to their own CSL partnerships, including fostering community/campus relationships, resource allocation, course and service placement design, evaluation, strategies for conflict resolution, and appreciation and celebration. Participants will leave with a set of resources, including worksheets, handouts and reference materials.

Presenters

Cheryl Rose is the Executive Director of the Canadian Association for Community Service-Learning at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Before accepting a position at the University of Guelph, Cheryl Rose gained professional experience in community development and volunteer management for non-profit organizations. Her passion for civic engagement and her strong belief in the power of students to work for social change, contributed to her role as the Citizenship and Leadership Educator and Community Service-Learning Specialist on the Guelph campus. Currently she devotes her professional time to her role as the Executive Director of the Canadian Association for Community Service-Learning. In this capacity, she encourages the development of post-secondary courses and programs across Canada which facilitate "learning through service."

Todd Barr is the Executive Director of the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Todd works with individuals and groups to build bridges between academic institutions and the communities they are in. Focuses of this work include policy and policy change, conducting and using community-based research, environmental education, youth and organizational development. He has worked with kindergarten-aged children right through to adults, mainly in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Ontario. He is currently the Executive Director of the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education in Peterborough, Ontario and holds a Master's of Education in Adult Education, Community Development and Environmental Studies from the University of Toronto.

Rachel Vaughn is the Assistant Director for Community-Based Learning at the Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center at the University of Washington. In her role at the Carlson Center, Rachel works with faculty to assist them in integrating service-learning into their course syllabi, assignments, and reflections. In addition, Rachel works with the neighboring University District to develop quality service-learning experiences to meet the needs of community partners, clients, UW students, and faculty. Rachel also directs the University of Washington's Students in Service program, a part-time AmeriCorps program developed by Washington State Campus Compact. In her role at the Carlson Center, Rachel is responsible for quarterly Days of Service, including the MLK Jr. Day of Service in January. Rachel is also a CCPH Senior Consultant.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to…

• Discuss and understand the key concepts and primary benefits of participating in CSL partnerships.
• Discuss and analyze how the planning processes and design steps for CSL initiatives apply to their own experiences.
• Understand the current state of the CSL field in Canada and identify resource people and programs of relevance to their own contexts.