There is significant demand for community-based research, and much of it is not being met. The Loka Institute has so far been able to identify about 50 U.S. community research centers, estimating crudely that the total number of community research projects conducted annually in the U.S. is somewhere between 400 and 1,200. For there to be as many community research centers per capita in the U.S. as already exist in the Netherlands, the U.S. would need 645 centers conducting about 17,000 studies annually. Most U.S. community research centers find their work chronically constrained or even jeopardized by an inadequate funding base. While there are community research centers in the United States, compared with the Netherlands these are few and far between, relatively inaccessible to the groups that could most benefit from them, and do not represent a comprehensive system.
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