Community action and reflective practice in health promotion research

While health promotion practitioners are engaging increasingly in research,there has been little examination of the practical dilemmas they may facein negotiating and collaborating with academics and community members inaction research projects. This paper analyses how the practice of healthpromotion can interact with action research, and considers issues thatarise for organizationally based health promotion practitioners andprofessional researchers. The first section charts types of action researchalong three dimensions (power, goals/values, resources). The second sectionexamines some of the issues and practical dilemmas which arise innegotiating and researching collaborative projects in community healthpromotion. The discussion includes the differing perspectives of:practitioners (managerial and frontline), community members and academicresearchers. The final section outlines a hybrid model of action research,developed in our work with community members, organizationally based healthpromoters and academy-based researchers. It combines the reflectivepractice of practice-based action research with the community participationand control of participatory research. The model is called communityreflective action research.