# Transforming health equity through academic integration: ripple effects of high-impact practices in CBPR with refugee-origin Montagnard youth

## TL;DR

This study shows how combining university programs with community research helps improve health equity for refugee-origin Montagnard youth in North Carolina.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a novel model of academic integration using HIPs within CBPR to empower marginalized communities and advance health equity.

## Key findings

- Academic integration strengthened co-learning and shared leadership in CBPR.
- Montagnard students led culturally responsive health outreach and gained research skills.
- The model promotes institutional transformation and sustainable community engagement.

## Abstract

This community case study describes an innovative model of academic integration, the integration of university-based high-impact practices (HIPs) with Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)—an approach rooted in co-learning, shared power, and mutual benefits—to advance health equity for low-income Asian American refugee-origin communities (LIAACRO) in central North Carolina. The Montagnard Hypertension Project (MHyP), a community-initiated collaboration, embedded five HIPs, service learning, undergraduate research, diversity/global learning experiences, internships, and capstone projects, within a CBPR framework to bring community partners into academic spaces as cultural experts and co-researchers. This academic integration enabled Montagnard college students (MCS) to access institutional resources, gain research competencies, and lead culturally responsive health outreach. Montagnards, an indigenous people from Vietnam’s Central Highlands, experience persistent invisibility in U.S. health and social systems due to data aggregation and the Asian American “model minority” myth. Through the MHyP, the MCS leveraged their cultural knowledge and lived experiences to co-develop culturally and linguistically appropriate research protocols, design and implement community health promotion initiatives, facilitate intergenerational dialogue, and document traditional practices. Using a ripple effects framework, we retrospectively assess multilevel changes (individual, community, and institutional) that extend beyond the project’s scope. Findings demonstrate how carefully and strategically integrating HIPs can strengthen CBPR’s principles of co-learning, shared leadership and decision-making, empowerment, and mutual benefit. The model offers a replicable pathway for public health researchers and practitioners to engage marginalized communities in ways that promote educational advancement, community values and empowerment, and institutional transformation. This case contributes to the field by showing how academic institutions and public health practitioners can reimagine and successfully mobilize institutional resources, including curricula, internal funding, and campus spaces, to support sustainable, equity-driven community engagement.