ID: 733 Congress: The First International & 4th National Congress on health Education & Promotion, 2011 Title: Community-Based Participatory Research station in IR :Looking Forward to Community Empowerment

Introduction: In the past decades, various approaches to human development have been devised. Since late 1990s, most approaches are based on "Community Participation" and "Community Empowerment". "Community- Based Initiatives" in World Health Organization are within the same line. In Iran, The Community-Based Participatory Research station (CBPRS), which were established in 28 medical universities in 2001, are working : together in order to reach the following goals: 1)Enabling students, faculties and community members to create a partnership to engage collaboratively in addressing the identified needs of the community 2)Improving individual and collective skills to reach the control over living conditions and their impact on wellbeing. 3)Enabling society for further cooperation. Methodology: Community-Based Participatory Research station (CBPR )is designed to ensure and establish structures for encourage ing participation of the community to take action in order to promote health and to solve their problems of prepared methods to encourage organized and informed participation of community in health promotion for approaching to tackle all those problems. The methodology consisted to: 1) selection of 28 universities based on their commitment and willingness to get involved in such research discipline. 2) The population of the community must be at least 35000 (about 7000 households) with minimum rate of immigration/emigration. 3)Formation of a core steering board committee composed academics and community leaders at each university and representative from the local government, health care authorities and NGOs.. 4) Creation of an expert focal point subcommittee. 5) Setting the priority list of needs based on default and standard criteria. 6) Designing interventional projects and implementation and evaluation of the projects. Results: 1) The priority list of needs is formulated in all 13 involved universities. 2) Pilot interventional projects are designed in almost all engaged universities and some are being implemented 3) The specific website has been designed and established. Conclusion: CBPRS are successful examples of a community-based approach in needs assessment and priority setting, but their effectiveness in the intervention at phase depends on socio-economic and political infrastructure of the country