Hosts: Cody Cotton, J. Robin Moon
Episode Description: Continuing on our reflection, we feature in this episode Kathleen Call, the former, now-retired, associate director of community engagement of IRL until the fall of 2024, and Ms. Bob-e Simpson Epps, a senior advisor of IRL. They have both been with the program from the beginning. In this very open and frank conversation, they discuss with us how they saw the program and the humans in it evolve: from One-way (academic) conversation to two-way conversation to truly meet the fellows where they are; from instruction-driven, content-driven to value-driven, relationship-driven; from telling to listening and co-creating. They also share the reckoning of the need to: broaden the definition of “interdisciplinary” from mixing academic disciplines to much deeper cross-sector collaboration; redefine the meaning of “rigor” of (community-engaged) research; shift the focus of doing research to fostering leadership. Finally, reckoning that all of these shifts and pivots didn’t just happen by osmosis, but took resistance and resilience of the community partner fellows in keeping the program accountable.
Take a listen to ponder on how it takes community-driven, shared leadership to build great, “rigorous” community-engaged research.
Guest bios:
Mentioned:
Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
Thoughts? Suggestions? Email us at researchleaders@umn.edu
You can find show notes, transcripts, and more episodes of “Promising Practices for Health Equity” at Promising Practices for Health Equity Podcast: Introduction - Interdisciplinary Research Leaders.
This episode of “Promising Practices for Health Equity” was produced by Studio Americana, and prepared by Cody Cotton, Mandy LaBreche, Krystal Lee, and J. Robin Moon of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Podcast Team.
