Measuring institutional community engagement: Adding value to academic health systems.

Sharon Neu Young,Joseph E Kerschner,Syed M Ahmed,Mia C Defino

doi:10.1017/cts.2019.373

Sharon Neu Young, Joseph E Kerschner + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2019.373

Copy DOI

Abstract

Beyond medical schools' historical focus on pillar missions including clinical care, education, and research, several medical schools now include community engagement (CE) as a mission. However, most academic health systems (AHSs) lack the tools to provide metrics, evaluation, and standardization for quantifying progress and contributions of the CE mission. Several nationwide initiatives, such as that driven by the Institute of Medicine recommending advances in CE metrics at institutions receiving Clinical and Translational Science Awards, have encouraged the research and development of systematic metrics for CE, but more progress is needed. The CE components practical model provides a foundation for analyzing and evaluating different types of CE activities at AHSs through five components: research, education, community outreach and community service, policy and advocacy, and clinical care. At the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), an annual survey administered to faculty and staff assessed the types and number of CE activities from the prior year. Survey results were combined to create a CE report for departments across the institution and inform MCW leadership. Insights gathered from the survey have contributed to next steps in CE tracking and evaluation, including the development of a CE dashboard to track CE activities in real time. The dashboard provides resources for how individuals can advance the CE mission through their work and guide CE at the institutional level.

Highlights

In relation to academic health systems (AHSs), most academic institutions have three missions: clinical care, education, and research [10]
A broad distribution of community engagement (CE) activities was reported by faculty and staff throughout Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW)
This is contrary to the expectation of the OCE that the results would show CE activities concentrated within specific departments and programs already known to practice CE, and which strongly identify their work as being related to CE

Summary

Introduction

In relation to academic health systems (AHSs), most academic institutions have three missions: clinical care, education, and research [10]. CEnR is a research process like any other research (e.g., basic, clinical research) and should be treated in a similar way [1] In addition to this assumption, the need for translational science, which goes from T1 to T5, requires involvement of larger stakeholders that include communities, and CE is a recognized process of making community inclusion happen [10,12,13,14]. Within the United States, measuring CE activity and effects is a national directive from the NIH, Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Carnegie Foundation [19,20,21]. Some institutions have taken the initiative to document and catalog the extent of their CE activities [16,18,31], it is uncommon among AHSs or medical schools to have a deep understanding of the types and number of CE activities that occur in their institution [4,16,25,32]

Objectives

Results

Conclusion