Advancing COVID-19 Response through Community Participation: Lessons Learned from Community-Academic Research Partnerships for Health.

Abstract

Advancing COVID-19 Response through Community Participation: Lessons Learned from Community–Academic Research Partnerships for Health Linda Sprague Martinez, PhD, Darcy Jones (DJ) McMaughan, PhD, and Hal Strelnick, MD This special issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP), Advancing COVID-19 Response through Community Participation: Lessons Learned from Community–Academic Research Partnerships for Health, examines the ways in which community partnerships advanced public health efforts in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. COVID-19 disrupted everyday life around the globe. It overwhelmed health care as well as public health systems and immobilized economies. Moreover, and not by chance, COVID-19 amplified long-standing and pervasive racial and class inequities. Indeed, COVID-19 has had devastating impacts worldwide. We also saw communities across the country coalesce to ensure access to information and resources, provide mutual aid, and advocate for representation in local public health decision-making. Community partnerships are critical to public health preparedness, prevention, and intervention. Yet engaging in equitable partnership continues to pose challenges for many. The collection of articles presented in this issue contributes valuable lessons learned and best practices for engaging in meaningful community–academic partnerships designed to advance equitable pandemic response efforts. These practices include novel approaches for remote community engagement, as community–academic and community–public health department partnerships transitioned to virtual outreach and engagement efforts. Meanwhile, partnerships used both critical and asset-based frameworks, focusing work on advancing racial equity. As a result, the collection presents nuanced findings from populations that are all too often overlooked but bore the brunt of COVID-19’s harms. Unlike past PCHP special issues, this “online-only,” Open Access supplement does not have a foundation or government agency as a sponsor, but rather our editorial board agreed to gather all the accepted COVID-19 manuscripts that have been submitted since the beginning of the pandemic and invest the modest income we generate from the Johns Hopkins University Press from subscriptions and downloads into eliminating the paywall for access to what we have learned from COVID-19. Like other publications regarding COVID-19, we want access to these lessons to be freely available to the public. Providing Open Access is relatively expensive with printing hard copies, especially as the business model even for nonprofit academic publishers has shifted from library subscription income to paid downloads for individual articles. This issue features an even dozen articles that center on the lived experiences of people in communities impacted by COVID-19 and other pressing public health issues. The articles report on outcomes and lessons learned, presenting new frameworks associated with the establishment of community-academic partnerships. Given partnership development is highly relational and predicated on the building of trusting mutual relationships, COVID-19 has meant adaptation. Social distancing, fear, and uncertainty for lay people, scientists, and health professionals alike, posed real challenges, but also amplified the need for a collective approach. Building and maintaining trust and trustworthiness were discussed at all levels of the public health and health care systems, throughout the scientific community, and among families, friends, and neighbors. [End Page 1] Partnerships featured in this issue explore listening sessions, town halls, and webinars to engage the broader community in decision-making, as opposed to relying on just one community leader or stakeholder, as well as strategies for advancing participatory analysis and online data collection. The pandemic revealed special vulnerabilities associated with food and housing security across many communities. As an opening to the special issue, we learn from experience in four Works-in-Progress articles that present valuable lessons learned from community-academic partnerships with Black and Latinx communities, which, not by chance, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Horton et al.1 in their article, “Lessons from Rapid Community Needs Assessment in the African American Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” describe a community-based participatory research approach used to implement a COVID-19 needs assessment with African American church members. The assessment was conducted by lay health workers who provided follow-up prayer support for members feeling isolated. In addition, the team met weekly to process finding and determine strategies to address unmet needs identified among church members. Here prayer...