Turning power over to the community is the impetus and inspiration behind a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grantmaking program, Community Research for Health Equity (CRHE), managed by AcademyHealth. The CRHE program seeks to elevate community voices through community-led research projects that make the priorities of communities the primary goal of local health system transformation efforts.

To respond to the historical imbalance in research funding for community-based organizations and those led by leaders of color, the CRHE program requires that the research project team be embedded within the community that is the focus of their research study, and that principal investigators are either a community-based organization or a community-engaged researcher working in equitable partnership with community members/organizations.