Minkler awarded Tisch College Research Prize

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service this month awarded its annual Tisch Research Prize to Meredith Minkler, professor of health and social behavior at the University of California, Berkeley, for her leadership in community-involved research.

Minkler received the award and delivered a lecture on Nov. 7 on the Boston campus, according to Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine Doug Brugge.

Minkler is particularly known for her work in Community-Based Participatory Research , a type of civic engagement research where members of the community and researchers actively collaborate in the research process, according to Tisch College’s Director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement Peter Levine.

“[Minkler] was one of a small handful of people nationally who helped usher in Community-Based Participatory Research leading up to and around the turn of the century,” Brugge told the Daily in an email.

According to Tisch College, the Tisch Research Prize was established as an interdisciplinary award in 2007 to recognize academic researchers who have devoted their careers to issues related to active citizenship.

Levine explained that Tisch faculty members nominate and vote on candidates from all over the country under guidance from Interim Dean of Tisch College Nancy Wilson. Faculty members search for candidates with excellence in civic engagement scholarship, he said.

Levine added that previous winners have included the late Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, a former professor at Indiana University who became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics soon after receiving the Tisch Research Prize in 2009.

“I was very intimidated when he told me in a subsequent email that one of the awardees had gone on to win a Nobel Prize,” Minkler told the Daily.

One consideration that led Tisch College leaders to honor Minkler with the prize, Levine said, is that Tufts has a long history of using CBPR methods.

“The award demonstrates that it is possible to do extremely high-quality research that brings distinction to the scholar and her university while also being deeply engaged with the community,” Levine told the Daily in an email. “Meredith Minkler is a great example.”

Minkler congratulated Tufts for recognizing the importance of research in the field of civic engagement.

“Tufts was doing community engagement long before the [phrase] was on anybody’s radar,” she said. “The fact that they’re now paying special attention to research in this area is another feather in their cap.”

Although Minkler had not heard of the award before, she believes she was chosen as this year’s recipient due the growth of general interest in CBPR.

“I think [people] understand that we researchers often study problems that aren’t of major concern to the communities with which we’re working and often only have modest success,” Minkler said. “We can improve both the relevance and effectiveness of our work if we engage authentically and really partner in a sincere, high-level way.”

Minkler’s work in CBPR, she said, began in 2007 with a participatory research study on restaurant workers’ health and safety in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Based on input from local community members, the project then shifted focus to include an emphasis on wage theft.

According to Minkler, community partners have improved the study in every way. Their involvement ultimately allowed Minkler to reach and gather survey information from 433 restaurant workers, despite the fact that the lengthy survey contained 130 items.

In August 2011, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors cast the second wage theft ordinance in the country as a result of Minkler’s study.

“This [issue] is being taken very seriously in the city now,” Minkler said.

Brugge agreed that Minkler’s work greatly affected policy in San Francisco.

“Her work clearly had impact in the real world in terms of prompting the [City and County of San Francisco] to respond to the problems of wage theft,” Brugge said.

Minkler spoke in-depth about the project during her Nov. 7 talk in Boston’s Chinatown, where several members of the Chinese Progressive Association were in attendance, Brugge said. University President Anthony Monaco presented Minkler with the Tisch Research Prize at the lecture, and, in his closing remarks, reflected on how contentious issues within a community may impact the future of CBPR.

Minkler said she plans to use the $5,000 included in the award to hire a student research assistant in her next participatory research effort centered on healthy retail in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The new program aims to increase the number of local convenience stores offering healthy foods compared with alcohol and tobacco products.

“The process of actually working with communities, watching them develop their capacities, watching how we outsiders really develop through the process of working with them ... I love it,” Minkler said. “It’s what keeps me going.”