Practical suggestions for community interventions using participatory action research.

Advanced practice nurses and nurse researchers with experience in clinical settings may encounter challenges in the initial development and implementation of community-based projects. Participatory action research methodology, a user-friendly framework for community-based research activities, provides a way for researchers and community members to work together to define a problem, take action, and evaluate their work. This article attempts to bridge the theory-implementation gap by describing background steps that researchers can use when conceptualizing and initiating a research project with community partners. Suggestions for initial steps and the planning and review cycles are presented, along with examples from the literature.