Community-Based Means Being in Community

By M.E. Avila

I believe deeply in the promise of Community-Based Participatory Research. At its best, CBPR allows researchers and communities to learn together, build knowledge together, and create something that is useful beyond a publication or research project. But I also think we have to acknowledge that many of us are still not getting it right.

We have become good at using words like community engagement, lived experience, equity, and community voice. But using the language of community does not necessarily mean we are practicing community. Sometimes what we call engagement is still extraction with better language.

Researchers enter communities with questions already developed, funding already secured, and outcomes already imagined. People share their stories, experiences, relationships, cultural knowledge, and sometimes their pain. That knowledge becomes data, and that data can become a dissertation, publication, conference presentation, degree requirement, promotion, grant deliverable, or another line on someone's CV.

There is nothing inherently wrong with scholars advancing their education or careers, but we should still ask: What did the community receive in return?

And I mean something beyond a gift card, a meal at a focus group, or an acknowledgement in a publication. Reciprocity should extend beyond the research itself. How are researchers supporting the programs, organizations, leaders, and efforts that communities have already identified as important? Are we attending community events when we are not recruiting participants? Are we connecting grassroots organizations to funding opportunities, sharing institutional relationships, providing technical assistance, writing letters of support, volunteering, opening doors, or simply showing up when there is nothing for us to collect?

To me, that is what being community-based requires. It means actually being in community. It means building relationships before we need something and maintaining them after the survey closes, the grant ends, or the article is published. Communities should not only hear from researchers when researchers need access to their knowledge.

It also requires humility. Researchers should not enter communities telling people what they need. Communities already hold knowledge about their neighborhoods, families, histories, systems, strengths, and challenges. They know what has worked, what has failed, who people trust, and what they are already trying to build. Our responsibility is to listen and to be willing to let what we hear change the direction of the work.

True participation also means sharing some power. If the research question, methods, funding, interpretation, and final products have already been decided before community members enter the room, we should ask ourselves how participatory the process really is. Community members should not simply be invited into someone else's project; they should have opportunities to shape it.

Reciprocity is ultimately about relationships. Communities share knowledge, trust, stories, lived expertise, relationships, and credibility with researchers. Researchers and universities often have access to funding, professional networks, policymakers, technical expertise, data, and institutional resources. Why shouldn't some of that power and access flow back into the community?

Perhaps every scholar doing community-based research should periodically ask: How am I supporting what this community is already building? Whose work am I amplifying? What resources or relationships have I shared? And when my dissertation is defended, my article is published, my grant ends, or I move on to my next opportunity, will I still show up?

Because community should never simply be where we go to collect information.

If we are going to call our work community-based, community should be part of why the work exists, how it is shaped, who benefits from it, and what remains afterward.

And maybe the simplest test of reciprocity is this: When we no longer need anything from the community, do we still show up?

This is shorter while keeping the point about scholars benefiting professionally from community knowledge and the responsibility to invest back into what communities are already building.