Community-engaged Researchers Research Articles

New Perspectives of Reciprocity in Community-Engaged Learning: A Case Study of a First-Year Post-Secondary Knowledge Exchange Project in an Over-researched Urban Community

This paper describes key discoveries and lessons learned about the practice of reciprocity in community-engaged learning (CEL). We draw from an example of a multi-partner, multi-year, CEL project that addresses a community-identified priority to access jargon-free research findings about their community. Our project benefits community members in an over-researched, equity-deserving, inner-city neighborhood without requiring the direct presence of large numbers of university students in the community. In this collaboration, first-year undergraduate students in introductory academic writing courses at the [Canadian post-secondary institution] create publicly accessible infographic summaries of research articles arising from studies that have taken place in [an over-researched inner-city] neighborhood. First-year students, in their position as novice scholars, bring helpful perspectives to the task of knowledge translation. As apprentice researchers not yet immersed in disciplinary languages, they are cognizant that the specialized types of discourse used in research writing are often not accessible to readers outside the academy. Pairing students with community-engaged researchers leads to multi-directional benefits: students develop their knowledge translation skills in an authentic research writing situation; researchers benefit from publication of supervised, student-authored infographics of their scholarship; and over-researched communities gain access to relevant research findings. A community-embedded institutional unit is crucial to the project’s success, providing the resources, relationships, and boundary-spanning expertise required to ensure this project is successful from the perspective of the community and the university.

"Community 101 for researchers": an online training program to build capacity for ethical community-engaged research with Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

To address the history of unethical research and community distrust in research among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, we developed the "Community 101 for Researchers" training program, which was launched in 2014 to enhance the capacity of researchers to engage in ethical community-engaged research. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of this training program as well as its reach and feedback from participants. The Community 101 training program is a self-paced, 2-h online training program featuring community-engaged researchers from the University of Hawai'i and their longstanding community partners. Throughout the five modules, we highlight the historical context of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander populations in Hawai'i related to research ethics and use examples from the community as well as our own research projects that integrate community ethics, relevance, benefits, and input. To determine reach and gather participant feedback on the training, we extracted data from the user accounts. The training has been completed by 697 users to-date since its launch. Despite very little advertisement, an average of nearly 70 users have completed the Community 101 Program each year. The majority of the participants were located in Hawai'i though participants were also from other states and territories in the US, and international locations. The majority of participants were from universities in Hawai'i in 51 different departments demonstrating multidisciplinary relevance of the program's training. The general feedback from the 96 participants who completed an optional anonymous evaluation survey given at the end of the training was positive. The "Community 101 for Researchers" Training program is an accessible and relevant tool that can be used to advance ethical community engaged research, specifically with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

Youth participatory action research as an empowerment-based method for community change

ABSTRACT Youth participatory action research (YPAR) centers the experiences of young people as experts in issues impacting their lives. The process of engaging in YPAR has potential to create positive outcomes for youth researchers, including skills associated with empowerment. As such, YPAR is a valuable method for building community power and capacity for change. Little is understood about the process by which empowerment happens through YPAR, including how youth develop a sense of themselves as changemakers and the indicators that an empowering space and process have been created. The current study identified components of youth empowerment rooted in the experiences of young people who were involved in YPAR. Data were collected through an initiative between university researchers and three community-based organizations. The project included development of three YPAR teams with a total of 15 youth and young adult researchers. Data for this study were drawn from post-project focus groups and observation tools that were completed at each YPAR team meeting. Using a theory-driven coding structure for empowerment, the researchers used an iterative qualitative analysis process to identify key indicators of empowerment that emerged from the data. Examples of how they manifested provide valuable insight to community practitioners as well as community-engaged researchers as they work to support community leadership and power building.

Introduction to the Second Issue: A Conversation about Community-Engaged Research

This introductory dialogue invites readers to think with a range of scholars about the role of community engaged researchers in the field. It draws together a range of perspectives as way of honoring CER through both methodology and genre. The authors provide insight into their own experiences and draw attention to elements of CER that rarely get discussed and published.

Community Engaged Researchers and Designers: How We Work and What We Need

This introductory essay describes the need for clarity and openness surrounding community-engaged research projects, which comprise expertise, efforts, and experiences that often fail to make their way into traditional research accounts and articles.

Photovoice Reveals Residents' Concerns for Air and Water Quality in Industry-Impacted Rural Community.

Rural communities of color in the southeastern U.S. experience a high burden of environmental hazards from concentrated industry placement. Community-engaged research and qualitative methods can improve our understanding of meaning-making in a community impacted by polluting facilities. This study applies the photovoice method to assess how a predominantly African American community in rural North Carolina, impacted by a landfill and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), perceives their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Two research questions were developed with community-based partners: (a) How do environmental health concerns in this community influence residents' perceptions of their HRQoL? and (b) How do community and county factors facilitate or inhibit community organizing around these concerns? Three photo assignment sessions were held to engage participants in discussions related to the research questions. Researchers analyzed discussion audio recordings and identified themes related to concerns about the following issues: health and quality of life, the landfill industry's influence on community cohesion and self-determination, and actions to address environmental injustice in Sampson County. Photovoice benefits community-engaged researchers by providing a process for assessing the research interests of a community. Photovoice also serves community organizers by providing residents with a structured way to discuss their lived experiences and strategize ways to reduce hazard exposure.

Data sharing in the context of community-engaged research partnerships

Over the past 20 years, the National Institutes for Health (NIH) has implemented several policies designed to improve sharing of research data, such as the NIH public access policy for publications, NIH genomic data sharing policy, and National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Moonshot public access and data sharing policy. In January 2023, a new NIH data sharing policy has gone into effect, requiring researchers to submit a Data Management and Sharing Plan in proposals for NIH funding (NIH. Supplemental information to the, 2020b; NIH. Final policy for data, 2020a). These policies are based on the idea that sharing data is a key component of the scientific method, as it enables the creation of larger data repositories that can lead to research questions that may not be possible in individual studies (Alter and Gonzalez, 2018; Jwa and Poldrack, 2022), allows enhanced collaboration, and maximizes the federal investment in research. Important questions that we must consider as data sharing is expanded are to whom do benefits of data sharing accrue and to whom do benefits not accrue? In an era of growing efforts to engage diverse communities in research, we must consider the impact of data sharing for all research participants and the communities that they represent.We examine the issue of data sharing through a community-engaged research lens, informed by a long-standing partnership between community-engaged researchers and a key community health organization (Kruse et al., 2022). We contend that without effective community engagement and rich contextual knowledge, biases resulting from data sharing can remain unchecked. We provide several recommendations that would allow better community engagement related to data sharing to ensure both community and researcher understanding of the issues involved and move toward shared benefits. By identifying good models for evaluating the impact of data sharing on communities that contribute data, and then using those models systematically, we will advance the consideration of the community perspective and increase the likelihood of benefits for all.

Joining Forces with Veterans: Veterans’ and Researchers’ Perspectives on Veteran-Centered Engagement Practices

Community-engaged research must reflect the uniqueness of the specific community involved. To help researchers produce quality community-engaged research with the veteran community, the authors of this paper (a coalition of both veterans and academic researchers) have highlighted essential considerations when engaging the veteran community in the research enterprise. Research with veterans requires unique sensitivity based on the impacts of their military service, history, and experiences. Understanding the impacts of veteran culture and community on recruitment is an essential prerequisite for anyone engaging with this population. At a minimum, community-engaged researchers should have an understanding of veteran history in relation to research, how veterans have experienced “volunteering” while under the chain of command, the impacts of a veteran’s military experience, and veterans’ views of the research process. The element most crucial to a successful research project conducted with the veteran community is incorporating veterans as full research team members. Building a veteran-centered research team requires academic researchers to establish trust with veteran team members and the veteran community, to conduct the research project with respect, and to actively encourage veterans’ participation in project activities. All of these are facilitated by having veterans as full members of a research team. It is our hope that sharing the lessons we have learned through working with veteran communities, as well as our lived experiences as veteran research team members, will help pave a smoother path forward for others wishing to conduct impactful veteran-centered research.

Achieving Racial Representation in Food Allergy Research: A Modified Delphi Study

The overrepresentation of White participants in food allergy research contributes to the development of research questions and interventions not driven by those disproportionately affected by the condition. This ultimately limits the generalizability of research findings and affects the development of knowledge about food allergy and food allergy management. To develop recommendations to combat inequitable research paradigms and increase participation of racially underrepresented populations in food allergy research. This study used a modified consensus development method, known as a Delphi method, to assemble the expertise of food allergy clinicians, advocacy leaders, community-engaged researchers, and patients. Findings resulted in 18 recommendations within four domains: community partnership, intentional engagement and messaging, recruitment activities, and dissemination. Findings from this study provide food allergy researchers with specific recommendations for examining their efforts more critically toward recruiting and engaging with racially underrepresented populations, effectively transitioning from a research-on to a research-with relationship with individuals and families living with food allergy.

How Community-Based Participatory Research Can Thrive in Virtual Spaces: Connecting Through Photovoice

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many qualitative and community-engaged researchers had to quickly shift from collecting data in person to utilizing virtual spaces. The foundation of community-based participatory research (CBPR) is authentic engagement and the establishment of trust between community and academic partners. We conducted a photovoice project that typically involves in-person sessions and revamped the process to be conducted virtually. The purpose of this article is to share how we navigated the process of conducting a virtual photovoice project with Black and white parents that explored parenting during the concurrent structural racism reckoning and COVID-19 pandemic, as well as share lessons learned. Despite the rapid shift from an in-person to virtual process, we were able to have an engaging conversation with participants that aligned with the core tenants of CBPR. Additionally, we overcame challenges through: (1) allotting extra time for unforeseen issues; (2) incorporating multiple activities to build trust and connection for participant-participant and participant-facilitator relationships; and (3) maintaining flexibility to meet the needs of the group. Ultimately, we learned several lessons through this project that may be applicable to community-engaged researchers deciding between conducting qualitative projects through traditional means or exploring alternative virtual options.

Utilizing Community Partnerships to Devise a Framework for Cultural Adaptations to Evidence-Based Mental Health Practice in Diverse Communities

Mental health disparities for diverse communities (particularly immigrants and people of color) in terms of access to evidence-based treatments, lack of education/awareness about mental health symptoms and treatment options, and lack of culturally responsive treatments have been frequently documented. Hence, diversity considerations in the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of psychological disorders remain vital and imperative in clinical practice. There is also substantial work indicating that cultural values likely play an essential role in shaping how individuals conceptualize and experience mental or emotional health. Therefore, the present study was developed for community-engaged clinicians and researchers to outline the process by which to create a culturally responsive, evidence-based treatment framework for community mental health interventions in close partnership with communities of color. This study was conceptualized and designed collaboratively with community leaders across five different communities of color: African American/Black, Latino/a, Native American, Pacific Islander, and African immigrant communities in a major U.S. city. This paper describes the mixed methods for such a community-engaged collaboration, highlighting critical elements for ongoing culturally engaged clinical work/research, and providing recommendations for culturally adapted interventions for mental health based on specific process observations made in the current example.

Using Implementation Mapping to Ensure the Success of PrEP Optimization Through Enhanced Continuum Tracking (PrOTECT) AL-A Structural Intervention to Track the Statewide PrEP Care Continuum in Alabama.

Ending the HIV Epidemic initiatives provide a unique opportunity to use implementation scientific methods to guide implementation of evidence-based practices and evaluate their effectiveness in real-word settings to improve HIV inequities. This report demonstrates our use of Implementation Mapping (IM) to engage participating county health departments, AIDS services organizations, and community-based organizations in the development of a data dashboard to track the PrEP care continuum for the state of Alabama, an Ending the HIV Epidemic hotspot. Our project is guided by an overarching Implementation Research Logic Model and by the tenets of IM, a 5-step approach to support researchers and community partners in the systematic selection, development, and/or tailoring of implementation strategies to increase program adoption, implementation, and sustainability. Step 1, the needs assessment, established baseline data elements for a PrEP care continuum for participating community-based organizations, AIDS services organizations, and the state health department as well as investigated their desire for data visualization and willingness to share data to inform initiatives to improve PrEP access. Step 2 identified adaptability, relative advantage, and complexity as determinants of intervention adoption. Based on findings from steps 1 and 2, the investigators and community partners determined to move forward with development of a data dashboard. Step 3 identified the following implementation strategies to support a dashboard, including development of educational materials, synchronous and asynchronous training, technical assistance, and improved record systems. Using IM supports community-engaged researchers in designing strategies to end the epidemic that are context-specific and more impactful in real-word settings.

Community-Engaged Research on Social Capital and Older Adults’ Health: Lessons Learned

Most adults in the United States prefer to age in their own homes and communities. However, many ageing-in-place models rely on expensive external services, negatively affecting access by lower socioeconomic status (SES) and other vulnerable groups. This article documents two pilot projects conducted by a community-academic partnership that examined associations between social capital, ageing in community, and health among older adults. The first project explored the association between social capital and health across community SES levels. The second project explored one type of social capital, timebanking, and its association with health. We highlight here our lessons learned from these community-engaged research (CER) projects: (1) Our partnership needed to improve our study design and data collection by enhancing our recruitment strategies, community site partnerships, survey instrument and data matching, and research team workload allocation issues. (2) We should have validated our instruments for use with older adults who had mild cognitive and visual impairments, acknowledged how community SES differences influenced our data collection, and included more research assistant support during our community meetings. (3) We would have benefited from protocol development for recording and responding to issues raised by participants. Our projects also led us to relational insights, such as reinforcing the need to foster clear communication across team members, involving community advisory boards earlier in the CER process, seeking network input on research strategies to meet older adults’ needs, and developing plans to sustain long-term relationships. We hope these lessons learned are useful to other community-engaged researchers.

Reconsidering Community-Engaged Research Through a Syndemic Theoretical Framework: Lessons from COVID-19.

Community-engaged research is a well-established approach to tackling health disparities in communities of color. However, the devastation caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) calls for a reexamination of the practice of community-engaged research. Syndemic framework characterizes the clustering and synergistic interactions between two or more diseases amid an underlay of social and environmental threats. This framework has been used to explain the disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19 in communities of color and may have utility in guiding future community-engaged research. This article describes the process by which a syndemic framework was used to generate discussions on lessons learned from COVID-19 and describes the ensuing collaborative writing process that emerged from this discourse. This article was developed by the Community Engagement Working Group (CEWG) of the Jackson Heart Study, a community-based epidemiologic study focused on cardiovascular disease among African Americans in the Jackson, Mississippi Metropolitan Area. By drawing upon a syndemic framework and lessons from COVID-19, the CEWG identified gaps and opportunities to enhance community-engaged research. Using syndemic framework as a starting point, the CEWG identified the following as aspects of community-engaged research that may warrant further consideration: 1) the need to examine multiple dimensions and assets of a community, 2) the need to view communities through an intersectionality lens, 3) the need to acknowledge the impact of historical and current trauma on the community, and 4) the need to provide support to community-engaged researchers who may be members of minoritized groups themselves and therefore, experience similar trauma.

Emphasizing the Impact of Service-Learning and Community Engagement Partnerships Amid Challenges Facing Higher Education

Articles in Volume 9, Issue 1 of the International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IJRSLCE) respond to the need to unpack community engagement experiences to better understand their impact on campus and in the community. Moreover, articles demonstrate research that emphasizes the impact of community–campus partnerships amid challenges currently facing higher education. In this regard, their authors share research findings that confirm transformative experiences and outcomes for community and campus stakeholders alike. Through the work of community-engaged researchers and practitioners, higher education institutions are proving their value. The research findings analyzed, lessons shared, and suggestions made demonstrate excellent work that exemplifies the transformative effects of community engagement.

Confronting legacy lead in soils in the United States: Community-engaged researchers doing undone science

Community-engaged soil testing projects fill gaps in an environmental regulatory system that does not meet the needs of people facing lead pollution in the United States. Lead has long been recognized as toxic, and soil is one source of lead exposure. However, in the U.S., systematic testing and monitoring of soil lead levels can be described as “undone science”—research in the public interest that is systematically neglected. Interviews with thirty community-engaged soil researchers across the country offer insights into the production and contestation of undone science surrounding soil lead. First, industrial interests resist the adoption of screening levels that offer higher levels of protection and environmental scrutiny. Second, the regulatory system focuses on legal action against identifiable polluters at industrial sites rather than broader actions to protect health. Third, soil testing is generally voluntary and there are deterrents to identifying contaminated soil. Fourth, while government programs for environmental testing are increasingly offloaded to academic researchers, research funding for “routine monitoring” is difficult to obtain. Fifth, straightforward exposure prevention is possible, but it requires funding and maintenance. Finally, the perceived lack of value or invisibility of soil may hinder public pressure on public agencies to direct research towards areas of undone science. Community-engaged researchers are challenging these mechanisms that produce undone science, creating new opportunities to protect health and the environment. The results of this study suggest that learning from community-engaged soil researchers could help to align lead mitigation policies with lived realities.

Engaging the complexities of community: conflict and difference in community-engaged research

This paper engages with the methodological and ethical complexities of conducting research across diverse sites of power and privilege, specifically by drawing upon twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork on the ecological restoration of the Ventura River in Southern California. The design of this project incorporates people from multiple, conflicting positions, including people who are homeless and living in riverbottom encampments, people in the environmental field working to restore the riverbottom, and people in social services working to house the homeless. Throughout my fieldwork various groups attempted to assert agency over my research methods and priorities, pulling me in multiple directions. However, despite this tension, this research design also afforded me the opportunity to develop trusting relationships across difference, which facilitated the opening of a new (and potentially more just) socio-ecological imaginary for the Ventura River. This paper demonstrates how one can create change across diverse positions of power, and the role community-engaged researchers can play in this process.

Building a pipeline of community-engaged researchers: How interdisciplinary translational research training programs can collaborate with their Community Research Advisory Councils.

Community research advisory councils (C-RAC) bring together community members with interest in research to support design, evaluation, and dissemination of research in the communities they represent. There are few ways for early career researchers, such as TL1 trainees, to develop skills in community-engaged research, and there are limited opportunities for C-RAC members to influence early career researchers. In our novel training collaboration, TL1 trainees presented their research projects to C-RAC members who provided feedback. We present on initial evidence of student learning and summarize lessons learned that TL1 programs and C-RACs can incorporate into future collaborations.

Interrogating academic hegemony in community-based participatory research to address health inequities.

Community-based participatory research holds promise for addressing health inequities. It focuses on issues salient to specific populations, prioritizes community engagement and amplifies the voices of marginalized populations in policy formulation and designing interventions. Although communities are partners, academic hegemony limits their level of influence over the research initiative. Drawing from our own collaborative research experiences, we raise questions for community-engaged health services researchers to reflect upon as a means of interrogating academic hegemony in partnerships that seek to address health inequities. We describe what it means for researchers to acknowledge and relinquish the power they wield in the community-engaged health services research enterprise. We propose three guiding principles for advancing equity: authentic engagement, defining and living values, and embracing accountability.

Personalized training pathways for translational science trainees: Building on a framework of knowledge, skills, and abilities across the translational science spectrum.

In order to conduct translational science, scientists must combine domain-specific expertise with knowledge on how to identify and cross translational hurdles, and insights on positioning discoveries for the next translational stage. Expert educators from the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Consortium identified 97 knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) important to include in training programs for translational scientists. To assist educators and trainees to use these KSAs, a conceptual model called "Personalized Pathways" was developed that prioritizes KSAs based on trainee background, research area, or phenotype, and expertise on the research team. To understand how CTSA educators prioritize specific KSAs when developing personalized training plans for different translational phenotypes and to identify areas of similarity and difference across phenotypes. A web-based, cross-sectional survey of CTSA educators was done. For a selected phenotype, respondents recommended one of four levels of mastery for each of the 97 KSAs. Results were tabulated by frequency, weighted by importance, and divided into tertiles representing high, middle, and lower priority KSAs. Agreement across phenotypes was compared using Krippendorff's alpha. Ten KSAs were high training priority for Preclinical, Clinical, and Community-Engaged phenotypes. These address research methods, responsible conduct of research, team building, and communicating research results. Nine KSAs were in the next tertile for priority reflecting KSAs in biostatistics, bioinformatics, regulatory precepts, and translating implications of research findings. A smaller set of KSAs can be prioritized for training Preclinical-, Clinical-, and Community-Engaged researchers. Future work should explore this approach for other phenotypes.