Enhancing translational researchers' ability to collaborate with community stakeholders: Lessons from the Community Engagement Studio.

Yvonne A Joosten,Tiffany L Israel,Consuelo H Wilkins,Charles Mouton,Yolanda Vaughn,Victoria Villalta Gil,Amy Head

doi:10.1017/cts.2018.323

Abstract

Community engagement is considered essential to effectively translate research into practice and is increasingly recognized as a key to successful clinical trial recruitment. Challenges to engaging community stakeholders in research persist and new methods are needed to facilitate meaningful stakeholder involvement. The Community Engagement Studio (CE Studio), a consultative model, has been used at every stage of the research process. Best practices drawn from the model could inform other methods of engagement. Using a mixed-methods approach that included evaluation surveys, impact surveys and interviews, we assessed the CE Studio program. We analyzed data from 75 CE Studios; 65 researchers and 591 community members completed surveys and 10 researchers completed interviews. Surveys indicate that 100% of researchers would request a CE Studio in the future, and 99.3% of community members would participate in a CE Studio again. We identified 6 practices to enhance community engagement in clinical and translational research: early input, researcher coaching, researcher humility, balancing power, neutral facilitator, and preparation of community stakeholders. These best practices may enhance the quality of existing community engagement approaches and improve the effectiveness of translational researchers' efforts to engage community stakeholders in their work.

Highlights

The recognition of patient and community engagement as vital to successful clinical trials recruitment [1] and translation of research into practice has heightened the need for effective mechanisms to involve patients, consumers, and other stakeholders in research [2,3,4,5]
We describe best practices drawn from the development, refinement, and evaluation of the CE Studio model and implications for preparing clinical and translational researchers to effectively engage patients and other community stakeholders in their work
Data Sources included evaluation surveys completed by both researchers and community experts; a follow-up survey completed by researchers and face-to-face interviews with researchers

Summary

Introduction

The recognition of patient and community engagement as vital to successful clinical trials recruitment [1] and translation of research into practice has heightened the need for effective mechanisms to involve patients, consumers, and other stakeholders in research [2,3,4,5]. There are many barriers to implementing these approaches including researchers’ lack of understanding and experience with engaging community stakeholders [6,7,8,9,10,11]. IP address: 18.207.189.175, on 02 Nov 2021 at 14:24:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. We describe best practices drawn from the development, refinement, and evaluation of the CE Studio model and implications for preparing clinical and translational researchers to effectively engage patients and other community stakeholders in their work

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion