Investing in Health Promotion Research Among Community Health Workers in Semi-rural Uganda Using a Partnership Approach

This chapter explores an interdisciplinary partnership approach to undertaking research in Uganda that has been informed by key health promotion principles that underpin our practice and add to emerging debates about what is distinctive of health promotion research. We present pluralistic and interdisciplinary methodologies, methods and key findings of several research projects in Wakiso District, Uganda, which the partnership undertook over an 8-year period. The partners operated from a common value base derived from the Ottawa Charters’ principles of empowerment and community action. Our partnership work has necessitated continuous community engagement and stakeholder involvement over long periods of time both with and in-between funding to support the health promotion practice among community health workers (CHWs) in Uganda, and, here, we discuss the challenges that structure research in this field. Our research approach using health promotion principles directly contributed to improving and strengthening the capacity of CHWs. Hence, we argue that health promotion research should contribute to bringing about real-world change. Key contributions of our findings for health promotion research and practice lie in the underpinning values that influence the ways of working with and in communities that are potentially transformative and the value of deep and trusted partnerships.