Transformation through partnerships.

C reating social justice involves changing inequitable systems, policies, cultures, and values, and fundamentally redefining how we understand community, health, science, knowledge, and evidence. This demands that we challenge and change the assumptions, systems, policies, culture, and values of the everyday organizations in which we work as well as the major institutions that shape and govern us. In this issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships, which is dedicated to work by members of Community–Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH), six papers demonstrate the transformational power of partnerships and point to the larger systems changes that are needed to achieve health equity—the ultimate goal of community-based participatory research (CBPR). Three papers explicitly identify academic systems as hindering progress toward this goal by narrowly defining rigor and evidence. An emerging international collaboration seeks to leverage the results of CBPR for greater influence on health policy decisions by developing common research definitions, setting standards for scientific quality, and synthesizing findings. 1 A Native health leadership initiative demonstrates how storytelling and different ways of knowing can both challenge and coexist with traditional Western approaches to teaching, mentoring and professional development. 2 The Communities as Partners in Cancer Clinical Trials project articulates how and why CBPR principles and approaches can be applied in every phase of cancer clinical trials, a complex system that, although involving patient advocates to some extent, is largely investigator driven. 3 Assumptions about what constitutes knowledge and who may contribute to its development and dissemination are being challenged by the growing use of arts-based participatory methods in CBPR. Four papers in this issue apply these methods to collect data, disseminate findings, and build community capacity. 2,4–6 Partners in Wisconsin employ fotonovelas to increase health literacy among Latinas. 4 Adolescent girls in Nebraska document and describe their community's strengths, needs and opportunities for action through photovoice. 5 A photo-elicitation process in Missouri stimulates understanding and action around the social determinants of health. 6 A team from Washington state incorporates storytelling as an integral component of its strategy for developing Native health leaders. 2 The diverse products generated from these projects—from educational DVDs to instructional manuals to online training modules—challenge the traditional academic system that views peer-reviewed journal publication as the gold standard of quality scholarship and the impact score of the journal as the marker of its impact. Fortunately, efforts are underway to address these challenges. In November 2009, CCPH launched CES4Health.info …