After 10 Years: A Vision Forward for Progress in Community Health Partnerships.

Abstract

In 2007 the journal Progress in Community Health Partnerships was launched to advance the field of community-engaged research and the journal's editors engaged in a Delphi process to identify priorities for the journal and field. Ten years later, the increased adoption of community-engaged research continues to improve public health. The purpose of this manuscrip t is to i dentify community-engaged research priorities for the next 10 years. The study engaged leaders in community-engaged research using a two-round Delphi process, whereby leaders in the field were asked to identify and then rank order topics in community-engaged research that needed to be prioritized for the next decade. In stage 1, 41 respondents generated 441 priorities across 8 categories (e.g., theory, epidemiology, intervention science) that were collapsed into 90 priority topics, ranging from 8 to 15 per category. In stage 2, 73 respondents ranked five prioritized items for each category. The prioritized items are provided, with the following themes present across all categories: 1) improvements to equity among partners, 2) partnership sustainability, and 3) increased efforts to translate community-engaged research into policy change. We compare the findings from this Delphi process with the priorities identified in 2007 to reflect on how the field has progressed. It is our hope that community and academic stakeholders will be able to use these priorities as a guide to their community-engaged research in the coming years.