Collaborative approach improves policy change efforts in community-based organizations, suggesting vital strategies for health equity.
A longstanding community-based participa-tory research center designed Project Health Equity via Advocacy for Resources in Detroit (HEARD) to enhance the capacity, collective power, and impact of community-based organizations-working in partnership with academics-to advance policy change for health equity in their communities. We describe how Project HEARD supported community-academic teams to develop policy advocacy campaigns that included 1-year goals for equity-focused change. Project HEARD had the following main components: a cohort of community-academic teams, policy change workshops, policy advocacy grant, mentoring by community-academic pairs, and online strategy sessions. Supporting community-driven policy change requires recognizing and building on teams' contexts, history, and expertise; tailoring support for teams with diverse policy experiences; and identifying additional ways to support sustainability. Project HEARD's approach and initial lessons learned can inform projects in diverse contexts aiming to amplify community-led policy change to support health equity.
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Reyes et al. (2025) studied this question.
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