Community Relationships Posted on January 20, 2009 Hilda M. Pantin (bio) describes the reciprocal nature of school-based community intervention.

The work that we do is very community-based, so having good relationships with community-based organizations is critical. And we've been working now with the public school system for approximately 25 years and making them partners in our most recent study, where we're going to be working in 25 middle schools and high schools in Dade County.

Actually the person who is the head of the counselors for Dade County Public Schools is a co-investigator on the study, and so we're really working as full partners with Dade County. And they have a subcontract, and they will be trained to deliver the intervention. But the intervention will be delivered as part of the regular functions of the counselors in these schools.

We incorporate community feedback in our intervention development, and whether it's from the parents in terms of focus groups, anytime that we've made any changes, we definitely want to hear what they say.

And in terms of the groups that we actually run for our trials, we often times will ask them once the intervention is over to give us feedback in terms of what they found helpful and what kinds of things they might want us to improve upon.