ABSTRACT
Healthy Dearborn (HD), in Dearborn, Michigan, has a mission to ensure everyone has access to healthy foods, health care and opportunities for active living. HD, a partnership between a health care system, city government, schools and 550+ community members, is guided by a steering committee and research team. We describe the role of the research team in shaping HD’s work and city policy. The University of Michigan–Dearborn, with other universities, links teaching, research and advocacy to advance HD’s goals. We provide examples of collaborative successes including service-learning classes, understanding health disparities, a seed library, healthy restaurant program and community conversations. Using Burawoy’s definition of public sociology, we illustrate how different levels of engagement between universities and communities may shade into one another and how powerful institutions shape and constrain community efforts. We ground this example in the context of Dearborn’s unique demographics where more than 42% of residents identify as Arab.
