The Ubuntu Approach in Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities): Building a robust community-academic partnership and culturally curated focus groups

Community-academic partnerships to enable research within minoritized communities are ever more important. Building on community-based participatory research frameworks, the Ubuntu Approach is offered as a set of principles for initiating and supporting meaningful and productive community-academic research partnerships. Particularly pertinent when the research is for and about systemically oppressed groups, the action principles are: 1) take risks; 2) identify and align core values; 3) create connection; 4) convey respect; 5) cultivate trust; and 6) put the work (i.e., benefit to the community) first, all of which are designed to create a culture for the partnership. These principles formed the foundation for the authors’ community-academic partnership that resulted in Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities), research to advance the understanding of the nature and consequences of the Strong Black Woman schema, and other culturally-relevant constructs, in the context of the breast cancer experience. Data from the first, qualitative phase of Project SOAR, in which 37 Black women diagnosed with breast cancer took part in culturally curated Gatherings (i.e., focus groups), provide evidence that steps toward the goal of benefiting the community were accomplished and that the Ubuntu Approach can be an effective method for community-academic partnerships. •The Ubuntu approach is a strategy to facilitate community-academic research.•The Ubuntu Approach's guiding action principles are outlined (e.g., take risks).•The Ubuntu Approach aided Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities).•Ubuntu guided Project SOAR Gatherings (culturally curated focus groups).•Black women breast cancer survivors reacted positively to the Gatherings.