Abstract
Interdisciplinary partnerships foster innovation to address pressing social problems. This paper describes an interdisciplinary partnership called the Chicago Food System Collaborative (CFSC) composed of a team of partners from four academic institutions and three community-based organizations representing a total of eight disciplines that included: community development and community organizing, community psychology, geography, nursing, nutrition, public health, sociology, and urban planning and policy. Partners came together to address the issue of access to healthy foods and nutrition in a working class African American neighborhood. We analyze and discuss the core principles that guided the partnership and its impact across three dimensions: understanding through interdisciplinary action research, building capacity, and facilitating innovations in practices and policies. Despite the challenges of interdisciplinary partnerships, the potential benefits and impact of such efforts reflect their value as a comprehensive approach to addressing complex social problems.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Lara Jones, Angela Adams and Howard Rosing to the project and the contributions of the community residents, students from Loyola University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago State University and De Paul University and other CFSC partners for their many contributions to the project described in this paper. We would like to thank Fabricio Balcazar, Kenneth Maton, and the other editors of this issue for their feedback on several earlier drafts of this manuscript. This project was partially funded by W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
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Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Hellwig, M., Kouba, J. et al. The Making of an Interdisciplinary Partnership: The Case of the Chicago Food System Collaborative. Am J Community Psychol 38, 113–123 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-006-9067-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-006-9067-y