Community Building Community: The Distinct Benefits of Community Partners Building Other Communities' Capacity to Conduct Health Research.

BACKGROUND: Academic partners typically build community capacity for research, but few examples exist whereby community partners build community research capacity. This paper describes the benefits of communities sharing their "best practices" with each other for the purpose of building health research capacity.

METHODS: In the context of a grant designed to engage African American communities to address health disparities (Faith Academic Initiatives Transforming Health [FAITH] in the Delta), leaders of two counties exchanged their "best practices" of creating faith-based networks and community health assessment tools to conduct a collective health assessment.

LESSONS LEARNED: There were numerous strengths in engaging communities to build each other's capacity to conduct research. Communities identified with each other, perceived genuineness, conveyed legitimacy, and provided insider knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS: Engaging communities to build each other's research capacity is a potentially valuable strategy.