The Examining Community-Institutional Partnerships for Prevention Research Project began in October 2002 with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Research Center Program Office through a cooperative agreement between the Association of Schools of Public Health and the CDC. The three-year project aimed to synthesize knowledge about community-institutional partnerships for prevention research and to build community and institutional capacity for participatory research. These ten organizations collaborated on the project because they were all involved in community-institutional partnerships for prevention research, had access to research and evaluation data on these partnerships, and believed that the shared learning and action that would result through a collaborative effort could significantly advance collective knowledge about partnerships and lead to substantive capacity-building responses: the Community Health Scholars Program, Community-Based Public Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, Harlem Health Promotion Center, National Community Committee of the CDC Prevention Research Centers Program, New York Urban Research Center, Seattle Partners for Healthy Communities, Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and the Wellesley Institute. This paper reports on the project's findings, including common characteristics of successful partnerships and recommendations for strengthening emerging and established partnerships.