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Over the past quarter-century, The Magnolia Project has served a section of “the Northwest Corridor” of Jacksonville, FL, providing reproductive and well-woman care and intensive case management to reduce infant mortality in the African American community. During this time, the primary focus for Magnolia has been to provide clinic-based well woman care, prenatal care, support groups and case management through a store-front site in the heart of the target area. As new opportunities for funding became available, Magnolia moved from its “traditional” focus of women who come to, or are referred to, the clinic site to a broad-based Community-wide focus in order to address the underlying symptoms affecting the community’s health and the disparities this community faces. The Authors have been involved in the discussion, design, and implementation of Magnolia throughout the past 25 years, literally “sitting around the table” working on the original program proposal. In this paper we reflect on our role as evaluation partner for the Magnolia Project, and discuss how Program Representatives and staff, Evaluation Partners, and Community Partners joined forces over the past 25 years to implement the Magnolia project, and how they made a difference in their community. The lessons learned from this process are informative to other programs seeking to expand their community impact through partnering with university-based researchers.

This special issue engages ethical, epistemic, political, and institutional issues in projects of collaborative research for justice that were designed with movements contesting policing, school closures, and youth disinvestment and unemployment. Three of the articles were collaboratively written by activists and scholars who drew from movements that deployed research for community-driven progressive change. The movements and the research are thus situated at the intersection of struggles against a resurgent anti-immigrant white supremacy, gentrification, a punitive carceral state, low pay and lack of meaningful employment opportunities, and the privatization of the public sector. These articles build upon and are in conversation with a set of related articles published in the spring 2018 special issue of Urban Education(Warren et al, 2018) that also addressed ethical, epistemic, political, and institutional tensions in collaborative research for justice. This EPAA special issue aims to advance the discussion through deep reflection within the context of focal ‘cases’ and within efforts to open space within universities for modes of engaged scholarship that can respond to the challenges of the current moment, as described in the articles that bookend the cases. Taken all together, this special issue demonstrates how scholars, educators, teachers, activists, community leaders, and policy makers can use the production and mobilization of knowledge as a force for building, supporting, sustaining, and advancing multi-issue movements for justice not just in schools and the academy but also in communities of color and others aggrieved by current inequities.

Abstract. Background: Device measured physical activity (PA) allow better understanding on how PA is accrued during days. The purpose of this study was to describe pedometer-derived PA levels and patterns by gender in a population of Chilean children. Methods: 100 children were randomly selected from two low-income neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile. PA was measured with a wrist-worn pedometer for 7 consecutive days. Steps were summarized as total steps per hour and steps per day. PA hourly-patterns were compared across subgroups by age, gender, residence type and nutritional status. Results: 85 participants provided valid data (40 boys, 7.9±2.64 years, 47.8% overweight/obese). On an average day, children accumulated 11692.8±6061.8 steps with no differences between sexes (p=0.14). However, boys accumulated more steps in the morning and lunchtime than girls. Only 35.3% of the sample met PA guidelines (active), with no differences by sex (p=0.39). Active children in weekdays were more likely to meet the guidelines in weekend days (adjusted OR: 4.70, CI 95% 1.67-13.20) than those inactive in weekdays. Conclusion: PA guidelines compliance was relatively low. Step accumulation patterns differed between and within days including differences by gender in the morning and lunch time. This information may be used for designing feasible and equitable strategies for increasing the chances for meeting PA recommendations in both girls and boys. Resumen. Antecedentes: los métodos objetivos para medir la actividad física (AF) permiten una mejor comprensión de cómo se acumula la AF durante días. El propósito de este estudio fue describir los niveles y patrones de AF derivados del podómetro en una población de niños chilenos. Métodos: 100 niños participaron de dos barrios de bajos ingresos seleccionados al azar en Santiago de Chile. AF se midió con un podómetro de pulsera durante 7 días consecutivos. Los pasos se resumieron como pasos totales por hora y pasos por día. Los patrones de AF por hora se compararon entre los subgrupos por edad, sexo, tipo de residencia y estado nutricional. Resultados: 85 participantes proporcionaron datos válidos (40 niños, 7.9-2.64 años, 47.8% con sobrepeso / obesidad). En un día normal, los niños acumularon 11692.8±6061.8 pasos sin diferencias entre sexos (p = 0.14). Sin embargo, los niños acumularon más pasos en la mañana y mediodía que las niñas. Solo el 35.3% de la muestra cumplió con las recomendaciones de AF (activo), sin diferencias por sexo (p = 0.39). Los niños activos en los días de semana tenían más probabilidades de cumplir con las recomendaciones en los días de fin de semana (OR ajustado: 4.70, IC 95% 1.67-13.20) que los inactivos en los días de la semana. Conclusión: El cumplimiento de las recomendaciones de AF fue relativamente bajo. Los patrones de acumulación de pasos difieren entre y durante el día, incluyendo diferencias según sexo en relación a la acumulación de pasos en la mañana y almuerzo. Esta información puede ser utilizada para diseñar estrategias equitativas para aumentar las posibilidades de cumplir con las recomendaciones de AF tanto para niñas como para niños.

As qualitative researchers based in the United States, we theorize and ground ethical issues within our work as inherent to the continuum of methods, epistemologies, and research relationships. Through collective and transgressive reflexivity, we write as members of the Society for Qualitative Research in Psychology (SQIP) Ethics Task Force, re-imagining the American Psychological Association's (APA) Ethics Code as a resource that is inclusive of qualitative inquiry and responsive to the "evidence based" quandaries encountered in our praxis. In this article, we name the gaps in the Code that are incommensurate with social justice oriented qualitative research and shake the epistemological ground of the Code from bottom-up. We interweave our vision for a new ethics Code that foregrounds the intersubjective and reflexive nature of knowledge production, preserves dignity, attends to power relations within and outside of the research endeavor, critiques relational and epistemic distance, and explicates the internal connection between epistemology, validity, and ethics. In our writing we note disruption of normative ways of knowing and being within the academy and within qualitative research.

In this article, we examine the use of a narrative approach to a community-based action research project that sought to support welcoming initiatives for immigrant newcomers in a mid-size city in Ontario, Canada. We employed a place-based lens to situate the insights of community stakeholders as representatives of local organizations and government and in their everyday lives in the city. We reflect critically on whether the narrative approach we devised fostered a dialogical, collaborative, and critical orientation that action research advances, by evaluating the way the project was designed and implemented. We argue that a narrative approach provides valuable avenues to situate community-based action research in the multi-leveled context of research production and elicits the multi-layered elements of meaning-making that are often overly simplified, particularly in positivist approaches.

Na busca de estratégias para a conservação dos recursos biológicos globais, vem sendo reconhecido, com intensidade crescente, que os métodos científicos convencionais e os arranjos institucionais nem sempre são eficientes para se lidar com a complexidade embutida nas dimensões biofísicas e sociopolíticas desta problemática. No enfrentamento desses desafios, torna-se necessária uma abordagem integrada, capaz de combinar métodos científicos com valores societários. As pesquisas participativas promovem mudanças sociais ao capacitarem as comunidades a encontrar opções adequadas - do ponto de vista coletivo e cultural - para a concretização do desenvolvimento sustentável nos seus próprios termos. A gestão ecossistêmica reconhece a interconectividade dos sistemas sociais e ecológicos e tenta articular a pesquisa científica, a formulação de políticas públicas e o estabelecimento de objetivos societários por meio de pesquisas interdisciplinares e processos de tomada de decisões envolvendo múltiplos atores sociais. Em 1998, o Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN), sediado em Ottawa, em parceria com agências governamentais, instituições educacionais e grupos comunitários iniciaram um estudo multidisciplinar de três anos sobre a saúde do ecossistema do Rio Rideau, na região oriental de Ontário. Este artigo apresenta o Projeto de Conservação da Biodiversidade do Rio Rideau - PBRR (Rideau River Biodiversity Project - RRBP) como um estudo de caso baseado na aplicação de uma abordagem integrada para avaliar a biodiversidade de um ecossistema de água doce. Na parte final, apresentamos uma estrutura conceitual para a construção de uma abordagem integrada da conservação e do uso sustentável da biodiversidade, capaz de combinar os pontos fortes da pesquisa participativa no nível comunitário e da gestão ecossistêmica, mediante um processo de aprendizagem social e investigação transdisciplinar.In the quest to conserve global biological resources there has been a growing recognition that conventional scientific methods and institutional arrangements are not always effective in dealing with the biophysical complexities and sociopolitical dimensions of biodiversity issues. Meeting these challenges requires an integrated approach that combines scientific methods with societal values. Community-based research promotes social change, by building the capacity of communities to find collective and culturally appropriate ways to achieve sustainable development on their own terms. Ecosystem management recognizes the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems and attempts to link science, policy and societal goals through interdisciplinary research and multistakeholder decision-making. In 1998, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada, in partnership with government agencies, educational institutions and community groups began a three-year multidisciplinary study of the ecosystem health of the Rideau River in eastern Ontario, Canada. This paper presents the Rideau River Biodiversity Project as a case study in the application of an integrated approach to assess the biodiversity of an aquatic ecosystem. Ultimately, we present a framework for an integrated approach to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity that combines the strengths of community-based research and ecosystem management through a process of social learning and transdisciplinary inquiry.