Equitable Collaboration Framework

How to Use

The guidebook provides clear explanations and examples of each of the principles and dimensions. It is focused on equitable, community-centered collaborations and ensuring that all partners understand and have the capacity to address the community priorities.

Particularly helpful are comparisons of the "rules of engagement" for traditional partnerships in comparison to equitable collaborations. In traditional partnerships, the goals are to build material resources or meet discrete goals, usually within a culture that puts responsibility and blame on a few stakeholders. In comparison, in equitable collaborations, the goals focus on systemic change and shared responsibility, or a more holistic view of an issue and of the possible solutions and stakeholders who can carry out those solutions together.

Similarly, the comparisons between traditional partnerships and equitable partnerships in their strategies, the roles of community members, and the processes for meeting those goals highlight how equitable partnerships tend to take a broader, more system-wide view of community contexts, issues, and strengths, and what these efforts can look like in practice.

Finally, it provides two essential elements —understanding and participation— that run through each of the principles and dimensions, and a continuum of involvement for scaling up participation for different goals. The continuum runs from foundational involvement that meets community partners' needs and builds community knowledge and self-efficacy, to systemic collaboration that builds in structural capacity and community leadership in those structures.