Ohio State, partner organizations discuss how collaborating helps communities

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Ohio State, partner organizations discuss how collaborating helps communities

Breakfast event showcases innovative research, programs

Students, faculty and staff from The Ohio State University came together recently with representatives of government agencies and community organizations at the university's Columbus campus to discuss how their collaborations are benefiting communities around Ohio.

The Community Partnership Breakfast highlighted successful programs and identified strategies to strengthen Ohio State's partnerships, said Jason Reece, vice provost of engaged scholarship and community engagement.

"We can't do this work without you, and your presence is critical to us," he told attendees. "We deeply value relationships that we have built with our community partners across the Ohio State community, here in the central Ohio community, and beyond."

The event also showcased programs that are representative of Ohio State's land-grant mission, said Patrick Louchouarn, senior vice provost, leadership and external engagement.

"If you poll stakeholders of land-grant universities like Ohio State to answer the question, 'what is the university good for?' the consensus answer is the charge for the university and its alumni to … develop innovation, to serve the public good, right inequities, guarantee access to health … elevate access to education, and serve all its stakeholders with the same effectiveness and ensure that communities achieve their full potential," he said.

Lori Criss, Ohio State Wexner Medical Center behavioral health community engagement director, said the hospital is currently developing an Appalachian and Rural Center for Health to serve communities around the state.

"What we're really looking at is keeping care close to home by making sure that our partners in rural Appalachian communities have the support from the university that they need for their locally driven, locally delivered services to sustain, grow and thrive," she said. "The goal is to keep the workforce local, create opportunities to grow and to, over time, improve health outcomes by supporting their goals."

A panel featured Ohio State faculty and students and representatives from government agencies and community organizations discussing their collaborative work.

Andrea Contigiani, Fisher College of Business assistant professor, said the college teamed with Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services and other central Ohio partners to launch a program to train immigrants on how to start businesses.

"We really needed help to connect with the community, so we reached out to a number of organizations in the city who work closely with the Ethiopian American community," Contigiani said. "Part of the mission was to bring a lot of students on board, make them part of the team."

One of those students, Farah Desai, said she has firsthand knowledge of how the program opened doors for immigrants who want to contribute to the local economy through entrepreneurship.

"I was born here, but my parents weren't," she said. "Starting a business if you aren't from here, there are already so many other things to learn. There are a lot of gaps and a lot of barriers. So that was the main objective and goal from all of us on the university and community partner side, was to try to solve them."

Marisa Sheldon, director of the College of Social Work's Age-Friendly Innovation Center, said the college's partnership with the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging (AAA) has developed housing programs and other initiatives to help older adults safely stay in their homes.

"We know that our mission is to support older adults in the community and to allow them to thrive and age with dignity," she said. "And to do that, we need more best practices that our area agencies can move forward with. … We have to build those, and the way you do that is through the strongest research possible."

Holly Dabelko-Schoeny, a professor and director of research at the Age-Friendly Innovation Center, said the partnership with the Central Ohio AAA enables the College of Social Work to put research into practice.

"The partnership has enabled us to do research that matters as we think about disseminating our work," she said. "We certainly need to publish in academic journals, academic conferences, but we also have the opportunity to disseminate a toolkit, a video, a webinar directly to the practitioners who are doing the work in the community with our older adults. We're able to infuse their knowledge and expertise."

The Community Partnership Breakfast also included poster presentations from graduate students across various disciplines discussing their community-engaged scholarship and research.

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