Empowerment forum: a dialogue between guest editorial board members.

Abstract

This forum involves several members of the guest editorial board for the Health Education Quarterly (HEQ) two-issue set on &dquo;Community Empowerment, Participatory Education, and Health.&dquo; The purpose of holding a forum was to expand on some of the issues that emerged through the review process related to power and power dynamics within health professional and community relationships. Although many of the articles touched on these issues, we wanted to take advantage of the collective wisdom within the guest editorial board to deepen our understanding of the potential implications for incorporating community empowerment into our practice. As a result of reviewing the articles, a common set of theoretical and practical questions were circulated to and agreed upon by the entire guest editorial board. The questions concerned definitions of community empowerment (CE) and power, the underlying values in these terms, the parameters of empowerment processes and outcomes, and the contradictions and paradoxes that confront us as we try to