Abstract
Facilitating mutually-beneficial educational activities between researchers and school students is an increasingly popular way for research institutes to engage with communities who host health research, but these activities have rarely been formally examined as a community or public engagement approach in health research. The KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kilifi, Kenya, through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach involving students, teachers, researchers and education stakeholders, has incorporated 'school engagement' as a key component into their community engagement (CE) strategy. School engagement activities at KWTRP aim at strengthening the ethical practice of the institution in two ways: through promoting an interest in science and research among school students as a form of benefit-sharing; and through creating forums for dialogue aimed at promoting mutual understanding between researchers and school students. In this article, we provide a background of CE in Kilifi and describe the diverse ways in which health researchers have engaged with communities and schools in different parts of the world. We then describe the way in which the KWTRP school engagement programme (SEP) was developed and scaled-up. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges, benefits and lessons learnt from the SEP implementation and scale-up in Kilifi, which can inform the establishment of SEPs in other settings.
Highlights
Community and public engagement with health research is becoming widely acknowledged and described in the literature, and engagement with schools is becoming increasingly adopted by health research institutions as a component of their engagement programmes
We aim to address this gap through providing a description of the 10-year evolution of a School Engagement Programme (SEP) within the context of a large health research institution in Kenya
This paper has provided an overview of the ways in which researchers have engaged with schools, and a description of how a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach involving researchers, teachers, students and county education officers was used to establish the SEP at Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kilifi, Kenya
Summary
Community and public engagement with health research is becoming widely acknowledged and described in the literature, and engagement with schools (school engagement) is becoming increasingly adopted by health research institutions as a component of their engagement programmes. We aim to address this gap through providing a description of the 10-year evolution of a School Engagement Programme (SEP) within the context of a large health research institution in Kenya. The general aims and approaches to community engagement in LMICs In recent years an increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of engagement between health researchers and communities who host research[1,2,3,4,5]. Community engagement (CE) with health research comes in a range of shapes and forms, and has a range of, sometimes conflicting goals, often addressing ethical principles of research[6].
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