Our Research

Civically Engaged Research can assist a community in:

• Articulating Issues: The research is designed to articulate and document an issue or problem that has been identified by the community, but the larger system seems to ignore or deny its existence.  

• Identifying Issues: This type of research is designed to identify community interests and concerns.  It is similar to a needs assessment except that it goes beyond need and assesses what a community wants and can contribute for the purpose of developing a strategic plan.

• Informing a Campaign: This type of research is designed to support a particular community campaign aimed at bringing about a specific outcome.  For example, a local youth group conducted an environmental and health impact study of a skatepark in a neighborhood as part of their successful campaign to have the city invest in creating the park.

• Documenting Community Impact: This type of research, typically in the form of a Case Study, documents a group’s development and impact from the perspective of the people who built the group and carried out the activities.

Some of the Global ARC’s previous work:

• Co-creating a Theory of Change to Advance COVID-19 Testing and Vaccine Uptake in Underserved Communities Using of a Theory of Change to meaningfully engage community members from or support underserved communities in two NationalInstitutes of Health-funded implementation science projects aimed at promoting equitable access to COVID-19 testing and vaccination for underserved communities.

• Access to Quality Healthcare for East African Families  Twenty-two women, refugees from eight different East African Countries, developed and conducted a survey of 220 other East African women refugees on their access to healthcare. This study highlighted the poor quality of interpretation services being offered to this community.

• City Heights Youth for Change: Case Study Part I Generating Authentic Demand. Founded by seven young refugee women (Bantu), this Case Study documents their motivation and process in establishing the group.

• City Heights Youth for Change: Case Study Part II Connecting to the Community through a Youth-Adult Partnership. Having identified disparities in education as their main concern, this Case Study documents how the group began to organize their community to make the School District aware of their issues and to begin to address them by creating a unique partnership with their parents and other adults in the community.

• Crawford Community Assessment  A group of thirteen students, alumni and parents from a school community (i.e., a neighborhood served by a high school and its feeder middle and elementary schools) developed a community assessment and surveyed 100 youth and 100 adults on the issues of health, education, safety and youth.  An outcome of this assessment was the formation of the Parent~Student~Resident Organization that has become a strong voice for the that community in school policy.

• How City Heights Youth See Their Community Inspired by the challenge to “tell your story before they do,” City Heights Youth for Change decided to tell the story of City Heights Youth by surveying them on how they viewed their community. The group designed a survey and 22 of its members surveyed over 300 other City Heights Youth on topics such as safety, law enforcement, cleanliness, education, etc.

• Hunger and the Safety Net in San Diego County  San Diego had the lowest food stamps participation rate in the nation. In order to push the County to change its most oppressive processes, a dozen low-income women conducted over 400 hours of interviews with households earning less 200% of the federal poverty level. These women, developed the interview questions, conducted over 185 interviews, analyzed, and published results and made over 100 presentations throughout the county.  This study changed the dialogue on food stamps in the county.

• Monitoring and Mitigation of Toxic Heavy Metals and Arsenic Accumulation in Food Crops: A Case Study of an Urban Community Garden “n this study, fruit and vegetable samples grown at an urban community garden in southeastern San Diego, the Ocean View Growing Grounds, were sampled repeatedly over a four‐year time period in order to measure potential contamination of toxic heavy metals and metalloids and to develop solutions for this problem. Metal nutrient, heavy metal, and metalloid concentrations were monitored in the leaf and fruit tissues of fruit trees over the sampling period.”

• United Women of East Africa A Legacy of Strength, Hope, and Unity A Case Study demonstrating of the effectiveness of place-based practice. With the collapse of the Somali Government, thousands of refugees from East Africa were resettled in City Heights, a community that had little knowledge of the languages or cultures of these new arrivals’. Seeing their community, especially their children, struggling to survive in the new environment, a small group of Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean women came together to find a way to support their families. This Case Study documents the founding of United Women of East Africa, their impact on the community, and their hopes for the future of their community.

• Youth Opportunity Pass  A campaign by a local advocacy organization resulted in an agreement to launch a pilot program that would provide 1,000 transit passes for low-income high school students for at least one year.  This organization wanted to assess the impact of the passes on the students to support a campaign for expanding the program.  The leaders of the campaign developed an evaluation that was based on their goals and objectives.