Literature Review on Relationship Building for Community-academic Collaboration in Health Research and Innovation

Abstract

In response to European Commission Horizon 2020’s call for ‘science-for-and-with-community’, scholars have recognized the need to conduct ‘responsible research and innovation’ and engage more with communities to combat today’s complex health challenges. Hence, higher priority has been placed to cooperate with communities in health research and innovation development to better match societal values, needs and expectations. Accordingly, the approach of community-based participatory research (CBPR), the ‘gold standard’ within the community-engaged research spectrum, is the most widely discussed. However, it is seldom achieved in reality, as it requires establishment and maintenance of open, transparent, trustful and ongoing relationships between community partners and academia to succeed. Paradoxically, despite of the significance of quality collaborative relationship to the quality and success of community-academic collaboration, the key elements to achieve it were seldom discussed.Herein, the literature review aimed to (1) discuss the previous experiences and challenges in building and sustaining community-academic collaborative relationships; (2) examine the relationship building strategies for quality collaborative relationships; and (3) identify the potential research gaps for future research.Focusing on the area of health research and innovation, peer-reviewed articles, books and grey literature related to building and sustaining relationships in community-academic collaboration published between 1998 and 2018 were identified using the Web of Science, PubMed and Google Scholar bibliographic databases and Google search engine. Literature available in full-texts and English language with a focus on relationship aspects of community-academic collaboration were examined. Previous literature suggested thatacademics and community members encountered common challenges in experiencing inequitable relationships, distrust, divide between academia and community, uncommon norms of power sharing, dissemination of results and lack of resources for maintaining long-term relationships. Two approaches of relationship building: (1) personal qualities and competence, and (2) actions for relationship building from the beginning to the end stages of collaborative relationship were discussed. Literature revealed that the ways that academics approach, collaborate, communicate with and maintain in the community had significant impact on both current and future collaborative relationships. In addition, academics differed in acceptance and readiness towards community engagement, which could be attributed to the differences in personal qualities and competence. Future research should target on identifying the factors contributing to such individual differences and compare its impact on the quality of relationship with community, so as to better cultivate individuals’ readiness and capacity towards community engagement and effective relationship building with community.