Community Partners
Community partners are central to the work of the Mississippi Delta Center of Excellence in Maternal Health. Through ongoing collaboration with local organizations, healthcare providers, and advisory groups, the Center ensures that research activities are informed by community perspectives and lived context. These partnerships support ethical research practices and sustained engagement throughout the research process.
Our work is grounded in collaboration with community partners across the Mississippi Delta.
Learn More about Our Aims
Our Approach
Despite numerous policy and program efforts, enacted at different levels to reduce the incidence of maternal mortality, severe maternal morbidity, and disparities in maternal health, these statistics have remained concerning. A shortfall of previous programmatic efforts is that they were not designed nor implemented with patient or community input and resources, and they did not address drivers of disparities. Key program staff were not integrated within clinical practices, hospitals, or health systems and medical providers were not actively engaged. To address these gaps, we designed our proposed Mississippi Delta Research Center of Excellence for Maternal Health to reflect a meaningful and sustainable partnership with the community in all parts of the process, from its inception to its implementation and future success. The central theme running through the center’s research projects and training program is consistent and robust communication across community partners and to and with mothers. Each community partner represents a node or access point to a larger web of community networks. These networks are necessary to garner community buy-in and engagement that amplifies community voices, needs, and resources. As liaisons, our community partners will ensure community member access to each stage of the center’s research projects and training program, including conceptualization, planning, execution, assessment, and dissemination.
By establishing collaborative, meaningful community partnerships, we envision that our center will seek to overcome social, economic, environmental, and interpersonal barriers to high-quality, culturally competent maternal care to ultimately improve maternal morbidity, mortality, and health disparities for women residing in the Mississippi Delta.
Aim 1: Establish a meaningful community partnership throughout the entire research development and implementation process.
Our center will be founded on a history of collaboration and meaningful partnerships model. We will ensure continued shared leadership with our community partners through co-leading meetings, trainings, strategy sessions, and reports; data and information sharing; and shared authorship and recognition on manuscripts, publications, and presentations.
Aim 2: Ensure transparency and trust by employing community-centric strategies for dissemination.
To enhance clarity and openness about the center’s work and partnership process, we will provide a public record of the organizers, sponsors, outcomes, and range of views and ideas expressed. We will use contemporary communication tools for dissemination, services, and assessment tools that align with the needs and preferences of the community members.
Aim 3: Adjust and adapt the center through a community-based model to make a lasting contribution to women in the Mississippi Delta.
We will leverage the insights of our community partners to ensure the center is adapted to meet community needs and priorities. We will also build the community’s healthcare and research workforce capacity to strengthen and sustain structural supports that will lead to positive effects on maternal health outcomes.
