Learning

The CPL is driven by community knowledge. The knowledge shared with us by our communities directly informs our academic research as well as the initiatives we design, implement, and support in partnership with community members. Schedule a meeting with Dr. Ryan Lavalley to discuss learning opportunities with the CPL.

Community Knowledge-Gathering

Across our work, we collaborate with community partners to learn from community members’ everyday experiences. Listening to and learning from community knowledge is essential to our model of sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships. Many of the initiatives we create and support begin by understanding community members’ experiences of occupation.

FOCUS-OAC

CPL Lead Dr. Lauren Selingo’s research study, Facilitating Outreach and Care for the Understanding of Substance Use in Older Adults and Their Caregivers (FOCUS-OAC), seeks to improve community and health care supports for people experiencing substance use across the lifespan. 

To do this, Lauren has partnered with the Orange County Department on Aging (OCDOA) to explore older adults’ lived experiences surrounding substance use, caregiver supports, and other community and health care support services. Facilitated by a community advisory board, Lauren and the OCDOA team will build supportive, accessible, and feasible programming that meets the needs of older adults and their caregivers. Following successful implementation in Orange County, Lauren plans to apply this approach in other North Carolina communities.

Fairview Oral History Collection

The Histories and Future Visions of Fairview project emerged in collaboration among Fairview Community Watch, Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, and the CPL. Fairview Community Watch (FCW) is an active group of resident leaders involved in many community-building efforts in Fairview, a historically African American neighborhood in Hillsborough, N.C.

After building community relationships for several months, the CPL team collected oral histories in Fairview throughout 2022. An April 2023 community event showcased the oral histories collected, and the team is in the process of archiving the oral histories to be available to the public.

Oral histories offer a rich opportunity to engage Fairview residents’ lived knowledge, informed by everyday experiences. The stories passed on through oral histories spotlight the vibrant life of Fairview while also offering nuance in the challenges it has faced. This perspective has been immensely helpful in informing the development of the Dorothy N. Johnson Community Center, which supports participation, intercultural engagement, health-oriented activities, and community cohesion.

Research

The CPL develops theoretical perspectives grounded in our community partnership experiences. Theoretical development, in turn, informs how we conceptualize and guide community work. CPL research has advanced knowledge in community-engaged research methods, community occupational therapy practice, and policy analysis.

Community-Engaged Research Methods

The CPL team employs community-engaged research methods in its work with community partners, and this work subsequently produces knowledge about community-engaged research. The CPL has expertise in a range of community-engaged research methods, including participatory action research and ripple effect mapping.

For example, OT/OS doctoral candidate Sayoko Kawabata’s dissertation emerged from her longstanding engagement with the Fairview community through her work as a CPL community engagement fellow. Sayoko coordinated an oral history team in Fairview to create and preserve the community’s history as well as inform an emerging strategic plan for community-led initiatives in Fairview. As she deepened her relationship with the community, Sayoko proposed a collaborative project focused on play as occupation, co-led by a steering committee of Fairview youth and adults.

Community Occupational Therapy Practice Research

The CPL develops theoretical and experiential perspectives in community occupational therapy practice. These theories have included occupation-based lenses, systemic analysis, structural critique, pragmatism, and community-driven perspectives.

CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley’s doctoral dissertation focused on community change at a senior center as it welcomed Spanish-speaking older adults into its programming and spaces. The study found that Spanish-speaking members were increasingly agentic in their community occupations. The communal growth experienced by the senior center and the Spanish-speaking elders was impacted by shared occupation. This community-level research transformed into a collaborative social endeavor that fostered community transformation.

CPL Community Engagement Fellow Leiha Edmond’s doctoral dissertation explores the question: what does it mean to age well in a city? Her research examined the enmeshed challenges of aging well in cities. Leiha used case studies of three metropolitan areas with growing populations of older adults to reveal how the particular assemblages of a city’s historic institutions and built environment, policies, and programs for older adults, and individuals’ place-based relational networks inform experiences of aging well in cities. Her dissertation brought together qualitative and spatial data to produce new knowledge that highlights the challenges and opportunities faced by cities across the U.S. with a growing population of residents over 65.