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Abstract

Background/Objectives: Community–academic partnerships offer unique opportunities to leverage expertise and resources to modify structural factors that address community priorities. However, few in-depth examples of successful partnerships in rural communities to improve food security are available. This manuscript describes the process of building a partnership to reduce food insecurity in a rural Kentucky community.

Methods: The research team worked with Cooperative Extension to form a community advisory board (CAB) representative of diverse sectors of the community who had interest in food security, agriculture, and/or nutrition. The CAB convened regularly, in-person or virtually, to review community assessment information and identify, select, and adapt relevant multi-level interventions. CAB members were invited to complete two surveys and participate in a listening session to provide feedback on working with academic partners.

Results: Over the first two years of the project, 17 people served on the CAB. Early in the project, the CAB prioritized interventions for working families, relatives raising children, and lower income households. Some ideas were able to come to fruition (e.g., family cooking social classes, raised garden beds), while others were explored but were unable to gain momentum (e.g., mobile market) due to challenges with feasibility, organizational capacity, and/or interest. CAB members reported high engagement and strong communication between community and academic partners.

Conclusions: Full exploration of potential solutions suggested by CABs may build trust between community and academic partners and could provide a strategic selection process for multi-level, evidence-based interventions deemed feasible for addressing complex issues such as food insecurity and nutritional health outcomes.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Notes/Citation Information

© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17030431

Funding Information

This research was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Agriculture, grant number 2022-68015-3497. The project described was supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through grant number UL1TR001998. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

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