Defining success in community-university partnerships: lessons learned from Flint

ABSTRACT

The success of responsible research and innovation (RRI) work is as much about the process of partnership as it is about the products and outcomes. In this paper, we present lessons learned from the first three years of a participatory modeling (PM) research project based on RRI principles and focused on the transformation of the food system in Flint, Michigan through identification of leverage points. Participatory modeling is a type of community engaged research that seeks to build representations of a system collaboratively between researchers, decision-makers, and community members. We discuss the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned from the Flint Leverage Points Project (FLPP) using the four ‘Ps’ framework–purpose, processes, partnerships and products. We argue a carefully designed participatory modeling process can serve to build lasting partnerships across community-university boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory modeling
• urban food systems
• systems modeling
• participatory research

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the community of Flint for their contributions to this ongoing work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.canr.msu.edu/flintfood/uploads/files/2022-0627-Flint-Food-System-Timeline.pdf.

2 https://www.canr.msu.edu/flintfood/index.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

Notes on contributors

Laura Schmitt Olabisi

Laura Schmitt Olabisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. She is an ecologist and a participatory systems modeler, working directly with stakeholders to build models that foster adaptive learning about the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems. Laura holds a doctoral degree from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She was a AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow in 2018–2019.

Chelsea Wentworth

Chelsea Wentworth is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology, core and GJEC faculty for the Center for Gender in a Global Context at Michigan State University. Dr. Wentworth’s research examines hunger and food security, food as a human right, and sustainable food systems through a gendered lens, promoting critical reflection on the impact cultural experiences have on health access and policy. Currently, she is working on several projects, including long-term ethnographic research in the South Pacific in Port Vila, Vanuatu, where she studies infant and young child feeding practice, urban gardening, and disaster response in collaboration with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and Ministry of Health. She also co-leads the Flint Leverage Points Project, a community-research partnership with the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. This research aims to map the Flint food system to identify leverage points to improve nutrition security and support evidence-based public policy. Additionally, Dr. Wentworth works on teams studying indigenous food systems in Michigan tribes and co-leads a team examining values surrounding farmers markets. Emphasis on feminist community-engaged research praxis and understanding food access through a systems-based approach unite Dr. Wentworth’s international and US research.

Kent Key

Kent Key is a is a Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Researcher at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Division of Public Health. Dr. Key specializes in Community Engaged Research approaches and methodologies. He has an interest in urban minority populations and use qualitative research methods to evaluate the perceptions and lived experience with a goal towards the development of community-driven solutions for health equity. He also worked to create equitable engagement for patient/provider engagement as he was a member of the National Patient Stakeholder Council for PCORI and PCORI’s National Fall Prevention Council. In his community role, Dr. Key is the Executive Deputy Director of the Community Based Organization Partners (CBOP) and Founder of the Community Engagement Studio of Flint. Dr. Key is also the Founder and Director of the Flint Public Health Youth Academy. Dr. Key is 2017 Fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders Program. In June of 2020, Dr. Key authored a resolution Declaring Racism a Public Health Crisis in Genesee County which was passed by both the Genesee County Board of Health and Board of Commissioners.

Renée V. Wallace

Renée V. Wallace bio: Reneé V. Wallace is a lifelong learner and entrepreneur, serving as executive director of FoodPLUS Detroit and CEO of Doers Edge, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. Introduced to participatory modeling in 2015, she served on MSU’s Innovations in Collaborative Modeling conference planning team, helping develop a community track for people new to systems thinking and modeling. Building on that experience she now serves as community partner and co-host, supported the 2016 conference, as well as the transition to modeling field schools in 2019 and 2021. Renee’s modeling experience includes building of systems dynamic models (food insecurity in Detroit 2015, urban livestock in Detroit 2016), fuzzy cognitive models (Trusted Conversations in Flint water crisis 2016); and integrated use of FCM and SD Models (Flint Leverage Points Project: Modeling the Flint Food System 2018–2021). Reneé is working to re/define community members project roles of sponsor, community PI, advisory team, citizen researcher, visual facilitator and recorder, and process monitor and evaluator; and she is developing mastery in using qualitative techniques that complement participatory modeling methods. Reneé envisions using these disciplines to work with visionaries and doers to accelerate development and implementation of innovative solutions to diverse types of challenges facing urban communities.

Miles McNall

Miles McNall, Ph.D., is Director for Community Engaged Research in the Office of Public Engagement and Scholarship at Michigan State University. Miles has 24 years of experience with the evaluation of health and human service programs and 16 years of experience supporting faculty, staff and students in their community engaged scholarship (CES). Miles has conducted evaluations of a wide variety of interventions including HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs, comprehensive community initiatives, school-based health centers, intensive home-based treatment services for children with severe emotional disturbances, and systems change initiatives in early childhood and youth mental health systems. Miles is the President of the Michigan Association for Evaluation. Miles offers a variety of supports to faculty staff and students for CES, including assistance in the development of academic-community partnerships, educational and professional development opportunities on the theory and practice of CES, and support in developing broader impacts plans and evaluations for NSF proposals. In addition, Miles is the lead organizer for the Innovations in Collaborative Modeling conference and Participatory Modeling Field School at Michigan State University.

Jennifer Hodbod

Jennifer Hodbod is an environmental social scientist, exploring the social-ecological resilience of food systems. Jenny has a PhD in Environmental Social Science from the University of East Anglia (UK), within the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Arizona State University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. Her research covers multiple types of food systems – urban agriculture in the USA, Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing in the USA, river basin development in Ethiopia, and leverage points in Flint, MI. All these projects are linked by the use of interdisciplinary methods to investigate cross-scale impacts on adaptive capacity and transformative capacity, and how this influences social-ecological system resilience.

Steven A. Gray

Steven A. Gray is an associate professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. His research focuses on socio-environmental modeling and understanding how individuals and groups make decisions about complex social-ecological systems. He is the lead editor on the book, Environmental Modeling with Stakeholders: Methods, Theories and Applications (Springer 2017). His research has been funded domestically by the National Science Foundation, the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) and by federal resource management agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the United States Geological Survey. Internationally his research has been supported by the Leibniz-Institute, the Australian Academy of Sciences and the Belmont Forum.