Community Engagement Strategies Research Articles

The promise, problems, and pitfalls of including pregnant women in clinical trials of Lassa fever vaccine: a qualitative assessment of sub-Sahara Africa investigators’ perception

IntroductionLassa fever runs a uniquely severe course in pregnancy. There are plans for Lassa fever vaccine clinical trials in endemic West African countries. We assessed the perception of West African investigators to include pregnant women in these studies.Methodsinterviews were conducted with eight sub-Saharan African investigators. These investigators, listed as speakers at the 9th European and developing countries clinical trials partnership (EDCTP) congress and had clinical research experience in sub-Saharan Africa, were purposefully included as study participants. Six are from West Africa. The information was analyzed thematically.Resultswe interviewed eight (six in-person and two on the phone) out of fifteen earmarked investigators. Respondents had limited experience with pregnant women in clinical trials, but desired a paradigm shift. They identified pregnant women's willingness, a robust community engagement strategy, and adequate safety data as enablers, while lack of safety data, persistent fears about potential harm to pregnant women and offspring, and inappropriate community engagement activities as potential barriers.Conclusionthe inclusion of pregnant women in Lassa fever vaccine clinical trials should be a priority of vaccine developers. Investigators are willing to conduct these studies provided adequate measures to ensure safety is in place.

A structured community engagement strategy to support uptake of TB active case-finding.

In Lima, Peru, a mobile TB screening program ("TB Móvil") was implemented in high TB prevalence districts to increase TB screening. Community engagement activities to promote TB Móvil were simultaneously conducted. To describe a structured, theory-driven community engagement strategy to support the uptake of TB Móvil. We adapted Popular Opinion Leader (POL), an evidence-based social networking intervention previously used in Peru to promote HIV testing, for TB Móvil. Community health workers, women who run soup kitchens, and motorcycle taxi drivers served as "popular opinion leaders" who disseminated information about TB Móvil in everyday conversations, aided by a multi-media campaign. Performance indicators of POL included the number/characteristics of persons screened; number of multimedia elements; and proportion of persons with abnormal radiographs hearing about TB Móvil before attending. Between February 2019 and January 2020, 63,899 people attended the TB Móvil program at 210 sites; 60.1% were female. The multimedia campaign included 36 videos, 16 audio vignettes, flyers, posters, community murals and "jingles." Among attendees receiving an abnormal chest X-ray suggestive of TB, 48% (6,935/14,563) reported hearing about TB Móvil before attending. POL promotes the uptake of TB Móvil and should be considered as a strategy for increasing TB screening uptake.

Health Equity and Actionable Disparities in Stroke: 2021 Update.

There are stark inequities in stroke incidence, prevalence, acute care, rehabilitation, risk factor control, and outcomes. To address these inequities, it is critical to engage communities in identifying priorities and designing, implementing, and disseminating interventions. This issue of Stroke features health equity themed lectures delivered during the International Stroke Conference and Health Equity and Actionable Disparities in Stroke: Understanding and Problem-Solving meetings in 2021 as well as articles covering issues of disparities and diversity in stroke. Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, MAS, MBA, MLS, received the 2021 William Feinberg Award Lecture for his lifetime achievements in seeking global and local solutions to cerebrovascular health inequities. The second annual Health Equity and Actionable Disparities in Stroke: Understanding and Problem-Solving symposium, which took place the day before the International Stroke Conference in February 2021, focused on community-engaged research for reducing inequities in stroke. Phil Gorelick, MD was awarded the Edgar J. Kenton III Award for his lifetime achievements in using community engagement strategies to recruit and retain Black participants in observational studies and clinical trials. Walter Koroshetz, MD, Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke delivered the keynote lecture on stroke inequities and Richard Benson, MD, PhD, Director of the Office of Global Health and Health Disparities at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, gave a lecture focused on National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke efforts to address inequities. Nichols et al highlighted approaches of community-based participatory research to address stroke inequities. Verma et al showcased digital health innovations to reduce inequities in stroke. Das et al showed that the proportion of underrepresented in medicine vascular neurology fellows has lowered over the past decade and authors provided a road map for enhancing the diversity in vascular neurology. Clearly, to overcome inequities, multipronged strategies are required, from broadening representation among vascular neurology faculty to partnering with communities to conduct research with meaningful impact.

Health TrueInfo: A multilingual Android app and social media approach in tackling COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy in Bolivia, India, and Canada

COVID-19 vaccine misinformation has been fueling vaccine hesitancy, which has been one of the main factors in slowing down the vaccination rate (Loomba et al., 2021). An increase in vaccine hesitancy, especially among the vulnerable communities, will exacerbate the already overwhelming economic and health burden of COVID-19. The purpose of Health TrueInfo is to use knowledge translation strategies to implement evidence-based health communications via social media in order to tackle COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy among vulnerable populations in Bolivia, India, and Canada. The Health TrueInfo initiative is in collaboration with health experts and community members, asking them to create audiovisuals that convey powerful and culturally relevant messages to their communities. Such content combats local misinformation and encourages vaccine uptake. The audiovisual content is then uploaded to our multilingual Android app and social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.The concept of using social media to tackle misinformation was informed from systematic reviews, highlighting its potential by health organizations to combat prevalent misinformation as social media is widely used to share and seek health information (Chou et al., 2018; Suarez-Lledo & Alvarez-Galvez, 2021). Community engagement and searching grey literature were important methodologies to understand different local contexts of misinformation. For instance, to better comprehend how misinformation plays a role in increasing vaccine hesitancy among the Indigenous Quechua peoples in Bolivia, we collaborated with a Quechua social media influencer, who helped us create a skit inspired by the current local misinformation. Likewise, we have asked other stakeholders in healthcare like local teenagers, frontline doctors, and health experts to help create content addressing their respective communities. The knowledge translation strategies utilized here were to contextualize information, appeal to potential vaccine-hesitant groups, and use community engagement strategies like involving influencers to help us reach specific demographic groups and overcome linguistic and cultural barriers (Bella et al., 2021). One way to quantitatively estimate the impact of the project is through social media analytics. When contributors or influencers helped create audiovisuals and share with their followers, some of our content have reached over 1000 impressions and 200 views within targeted demographics. This initial success may imply how Health TrueInfo models the idea of health experts, social media influencers, and members of their own communities working together to reduce vaccine misinformation and hesitancy via creating multimodal social media contents, which in turn might help increase health and digital literacy, and battle social isolation. As health misinformation is a relatively new research field and vaccine hesitancy literature for countries like Bolivia and for the Indigenous communities in general are limited, Health TrueInfo can inspire participatory action research in countries and communities that are under-represented in the peer-reviewed literature to better understand different context-specific factors contributing to vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.

Community Engagement and Greening Strategies as Enabling Practices for Inclusive and Resilient Cities

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Community engagement for malaria elimination in the Greater Mekong Sub-region: a qualitative study among malaria researchers and policymakers

BackgroundCommunity engagement has increasingly received attention in malaria research and programme interventions, particularly as countries aim for malaria elimination. Although community engagement strategies and activities are constantly developing, little is known about how those who implement research or programmes view community engagement. This article explores the perspectives of researchers and policy makers in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) on community engagement for malaria control and elimination.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted among 17 policymakers and 15 senior researchers working in the field of malaria. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in English. Transcribed data were analysed using deductive and inductive approaches in QSR NVivo. Themes and sub-themes were generated.ResultsResearchers and policymakers emphasized the importance of community engagement in promoting participation in malaria research and interventions. Building trust with the community was seen as crucial. Respondents emphasized involving authority/leadership structures and highlighted the need for intense and participatory engagement. Geographic remoteness, social, cultural, and linguistic diversity were identified as barriers to meaningful engagement. Local staff were described as an essential ‘connect’ between researchers or policymakers and prospective participants. Sharing information with community members, using various strategies including creative and participatory methods were highlighted.ConclusionsPolicymakers and researchers involved in malaria prevention and control in the GMS viewed community engagement as crucial for promoting participation in research or programmatic interventions. Given the difficulties of the ‘last mile’ to elimination, sustained investment in community engagement is needed in isolated areas of the GMS where malaria transmission continues. Involving community-based malaria workers is ever more critical to ensure the elimination efforts engage hard-to-reach populations in remote areas of GMS.

Pandemic preparedness and COVID-19: an exploratory analysis of infection and fatality rates, and contextual factors associated with preparedness in 177 countries, from Jan 1, 2020, to Sept 30, 2021

SummaryBackgroundNational rates of COVID-19 infection and fatality have varied dramatically since the onset of the pandemic. Understanding the conditions associated with this cross-country variation is essential to guiding investment in more effective preparedness and response for future pandemics.MethodsDaily SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 deaths for 177 countries and territories and 181 subnational locations were extracted from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's modelling database. Cumulative infection rate and infection-fatality ratio (IFR) were estimated and standardised for environmental, demographic, biological, and economic factors. For infections, we included factors associated with environmental seasonality (measured as the relative risk of pneumonia), population density, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, proportion of the population living below 100 m, and a proxy for previous exposure to other betacoronaviruses. For IFR, factors were age distribution of the population, mean body-mass index (BMI), exposure to air pollution, smoking rates, the proxy for previous exposure to other betacoronaviruses, population density, age-standardised prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer, and GDP per capita. These were standardised using indirect age standardisation and multivariate linear models. Standardised national cumulative infection rates and IFRs were tested for associations with 12 pandemic preparedness indices, seven health-care capacity indicators, and ten other demographic, social, and political conditions using linear regression. To investigate pathways by which important factors might affect infections with SARS-CoV-2, we also assessed the relationship between interpersonal and governmental trust and corruption and changes in mobility patterns and COVID-19 vaccination rates.FindingsThe factors that explained the most variation in cumulative rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection between Jan 1, 2020, and Sept 30, 2021, included the proportion of the population living below 100 m (5·4% [4·0–7·9] of variation), GDP per capita (4·2% [1·8–6·6] of variation), and the proportion of infections attributable to seasonality (2·1% [95% uncertainty interval 1·7–2·7] of variation). Most cross-country variation in cumulative infection rates could not be explained. The factors that explained the most variation in COVID-19 IFR over the same period were the age profile of the country (46·7% [18·4–67·6] of variation), GDP per capita (3·1% [0·3–8·6] of variation), and national mean BMI (1·1% [0·2–2·6] of variation). 44·4% (29·2–61·7) of cross-national variation in IFR could not be explained. Pandemic-preparedness indices, which aim to measure health security capacity, were not meaningfully associated with standardised infection rates or IFRs. Measures of trust in the government and interpersonal trust, as well as less government corruption, had larger, statistically significant associations with lower standardised infection rates. High levels of government and interpersonal trust, as well as less government corruption, were also associated with higher COVID-19 vaccine coverage among middle-income and high-income countries where vaccine availability was more widespread, and lower corruption was associated with greater reductions in mobility. If these modelled associations were to be causal, an increase in trust of governments such that all countries had societies that attained at least the amount of trust in government or interpersonal trust measured in Denmark, which is in the 75th percentile across these spectrums, might have reduced global infections by 12·9% (5·7–17·8) for government trust and 40·3% (24·3–51·4) for interpersonal trust. Similarly, if all countries had a national BMI equal to or less than that of the 25th percentile, our analysis suggests global standardised IFR would be reduced by 11·1%.InterpretationEfforts to improve pandemic preparedness and response for the next pandemic might benefit from greater investment in risk communication and community engagement strategies to boost the confidence that individuals have in public health guidance. Our results suggest that increasing health promotion for key modifiable risks is associated with a reduction of fatalities in such a scenario.FundingBill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J Stanton, T Gillespie, J and E Nordstrom, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Community Engagement: Lessons Learned From the AAASPS and SDBA.

Community engagement is a means to help overcome challenges to the delivery of health care and preventative services. On the occasion of the 2021 International Stroke Conference Edgar J. Kenton III Lecture, I review community engagement strategies utilized in the AAASPS trial (African-American Antiplatelet Stroke Prevention Study) and SDBA (Studies of Dementia in the Black Aged) observational studies that I directed. The main community engagement strategies included use of home visits (bringing the study to the community), engagement of churches, community advisors, community physicians, other healthcare providers, major Black community organizations, and utilization of diversity training. Community engagement strategies were a major component of AAASPS and SDBA that helped to ensure successful recruitment and retention of an underrepresented community in clinical trial and observational studies. Lessons learned from these studies largely carried out in the 1980s and 1990s helped to dispel myths that Blacks could not be recruited into large-scale clinical trials, emphasized the importance of studying underrepresented groups with adequate statistical power to test primary study hypotheses, and provided foundational recruitment and retention methods for future consideration.

Rural cooperatives in disaster risk reduction and management: contributions and challenges

PurposeThis paper is to contribute to addressing the knowledge gap on the roles of rural cooperatives in disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM).Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a mixed-methods approach highlighting indigenous strategies of community engagement – the pantatabtaval/tong tongan (brainstorming and dialogs), pan-iestorya/dad-at (storytelling session) and field observations with 50 village-level cooperatives in Benguet, Philippines to understand their contributions to local DRRM.FindingsRural cooperatives in Benguet have evolved on their context of service from mere rural development to now include DRRM donations and aid for disaster-affected families, credit and loans are the most common services of these rural cooperative extended to their members to deal with risks of disasters.Originality/valueMost research on cooperatives focuses on their contribution to socio-economic development and only few dealt with DRRM. This paper explores the link of these rural organizations with DRRM drawing evidence from cooperatives in the rural communities of Benguet, Philippines.

The role of museums, design accessibility and community concerns: A case study of the State Bank of Pakistan Museum & Art Gallery

ABSTRACT This article addresses strategies for community engagement and social inclusion in museum practice through a case study of the State Bank of Pakistan Museum & Art Gallery from the museum director’s point of view. Through the initial interior and visual design and the ongoing programmes design, the museum staff have sought to foster interactivity and accessibility that support the engagement of a diverse community of museumgoers. In this case study, specific design strategies are described which are used at the museum, as well as a range of interactive activities, from tours for the hearing impaired to the incorporation of local craft making into museum programmes. Through these actions, the museum works to support the community’s engagement with heritage as well as heritage’s development through community. Museums must be accountable to and supportive of communities because it is people’s active participation in museum activities that keeps heritage alive.

Abstract PO-206: Community conversations on cancer: Creating and implementing a community engagement strategy for the 2022-2027 Illinois Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan through an academic – state public health department partnership

Abstract Background: Comprehensive cancer control (CCC) plans are region-specific blueprints that identify cancer priorities and health equity informed strategies to address cancer burden and are supported by the National Comprehensive Cancer Control Program through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although CCC plans are created by stakeholder coalitions, few have focused on community engaged approaches, which may diminish their applicability for community members. Thus, in preparation for its forthcoming 2022-2027 CCC plan, the Illinois Comprehensive Cancer Control Program collaborated with the University of Illinois Cancer Center's Community Engagement and Health Equity office to implement a community engagement strategy to address cancer burden. Objective: To describe the development and implementation of a community engagement strategy for the 2022-2027 Illinois CCC plan. Method: The goal of the community engagement strategy was to identify barriers, facilitating factors and recommendations related to cancer burden and equity in Illinois by engaging diverse community stakeholders. A statewide town hall and focus groups (FGs) were implemented in early 2021. The development and analysis of the community engagement strategy were guided by the Model for Analysis of Population Health and Health Disparities, CDC's CHANGE Action Guide, and the Community ToolBox. Semi-structured guides included questions about fundamental causes of health, social and physical contexts, individual demographics and risk factors, and biologic responses and pathways. The town hall was open to Illinoisians over 18 years of age. FG participants were selected using purposive sampling to maximize group heterogeneity. Eight FGs were held, one each for: rural residents, survivors, young survivors, caregivers, and Spanish speakers, and three that were a mix of community members. Town hall notes and FGs were analyzed using content analysis. Results were synthesized and a final report was included in the forthcoming plan. Results: Town hall and FG (n=8) participants (n=115) included cancer survivors (36%), caregivers (27%), Latinos (17%), African Americans (23%), and rural residents (14%). Throughout the development of the plan, data were continuously reviewed with the coalition developing the CCC Plan. The final report described multi-level factors that contribute to cancer disparities among Illinoisians, proposed recommendations to improve health across the cancer continuum across multiple levels, funding priorities, and the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care. Participant quotes supported strategies throughout the plan. Conclusion: A robust community engagement strategy for the forthcoming 2022-2027 Illinois CCC Plan was implemented through a successful academic–state public health department partnership. This strategy ensures that the plan reflects the expertise and voices of Illinoisians impacted by cancer. This engagement strategy, framed around health determinants that impact cancer risk and outcomes, may be replicated by other coalitions creating CCC plans. Citation Format: Leslie R Carnahan, Jennifer Newsome, Sarah Christian, Colleen Hallock, Brenda Soto, Yohana Ghdey, Linda Kasebier, Manorama Khare, Erica Martinez, Vida Henderson. Community conversations on cancer: Creating and implementing a community engagement strategy for the 2022-2027 Illinois Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan through an academic – state public health department partnership [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Conference: 14th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2021 Oct 6-8. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-206.

Designing appropriate, acceptable and feasible community-engagement approaches to improve routine immunisation outcomes in low- and middle-income countries: A synthesis of 3ie-supported formative evaluations.

As global child vaccination coverage has plateaued, understanding how to increase routine child vaccination rates further is key to avoiding preventable disease and death. To analyse how community engagement strategies can increase child vaccination, we synthesise the results from formative evaluations of interventions that aimed to increase vaccination coverage in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Pakistan. This paper uses an inductive qualitative approach to synthesise the results from the six evaluations, gathering lessons for designing context appropriate interventions that are feasible to implement and acceptable to providers, communities, and caregivers. Assessing contextual, caregiver-level and provider-level barriers to vaccination is key to identifying appropriate engagement strategies. Across all contexts, low knowledge about the schedule of vaccines and the importance of timeliness represented a barrier to child immunisation. Despite the variability in how studies measured and reported caregiver attitudes, vaccine hesitancy was not found to represent an important barrier to immunisation. Frontline health workers played a critical role in community engagement approaches to increase vaccination. Interventions successfully obtained community buy-in by centre-staging community members, especially leaders, ensuring their participation in monitoring, and making immunisation an agenda item on community platforms. Interventions were implemented through existing health systems with substantial assistance from research teams. Limited data was available about intervention costs. Interventions designed around community engagement strategies can be appropriate, acceptable, and feasible approaches to overcome barriers to vaccination in a variety of low- and middle-income country contexts. However, questions remain about the ability of health systems to implement interventions at scale, both from a cost perspective and a capacity perspective.

Supporting Community Partners in Reducing HIV-Related Health Disparities: Technical Assistance Across a Spectrum of Intensity.

The HIV epidemic remains a public health threat in the U.S., and the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based prevention and care programs are critical to addressing significant HIV health disparities. The provision of technical assistance (TA) to program providers and evaluators is key for uptake of these programs. The University of California San Francisco Prevention Research Center (UCSF PRC) model for TA delivery uses topics and strategies adapted to address HIV health disparities for a global audience. This model specifically matches TA requests to a TA provider who has expertise in that area upon receiving a request through various communication channels. Areas of expertise include research methods, community engagement strategies, interventions, and Implementation Sciences. Our evaluation of diverse TA services indicates that on-demand TA is effective for light-touch requests and well-suited for moderate to intensive requests. The model is a promising, broad-reaching, and responsive alternative for providing TA to a multitude of HIV workforce recipients.

Young Men's Health Matters: Implementing a Community-Academic Partnership in an Urban Federally Qualified Health Center.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches are being leveraged more and more in efforts to improve health equity. Informing the building of community-academic partnerships, CBPR draws on the community's expressed needs and engages stakeholders in future intervention development. To date, however, little has been published on such efforts targeting the health of young Black men (ages 18-24), despite this population's disproportionate need. In this paper, we describe the formation of a community-academic partnership in a federally qualified health center, with the goal of improving the health of young Black men in Detroit, Michigan. After conducting a needs assessment, we built upon existing networks to form a Community Advisory Board (CAB). We held three community forums during which CAB members highlighted key health issues in their community and described how they could be addressed. We developed a plan for future research and community engagement based on community input. Finally, we provide insights on community engagement strategies, forum structure, setting boundaries, trust-building, and valuable information in addressing the inequities in health that affect young Black men.

Nursing students’ experiences of community-based learning in an undergraduate programme at a Namibian University

BackgroundCommunity-based learning (CBL) is a strategy that gives students an opportunity to deal with real health problems in natural settings. Considerations to support such learning should be a priority for nursing education because a good CBL experience can improve students’ handling of community-based health problems in the future. PurposeThe study explored nursing students’ experiences of CBL in an undergraduate programme at a Namibian university. MethodA qualitative descriptive design was applied to collect data from a purposively selected sample of 20 students who participated in four focus group discussions. Thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts was conducted simultaneously with data collection. FindingsThe findings revealed that CBL is experienced as a community engagement strategy and a beneficial learning strategy. However, some challenges were experienced by nursing students including financial and accessibility constraints and limited involvement of educators. ConclusionsThe study demonstrates that exposing students to community engagement can help to intentionally integrate theory and practice. The findings of the current study are important for nurse educators in local, national, and international contexts.

Influence of post types on Facebook engagement: the moderating roles of brand category and brand internationalisation

Strategies for brand community engagement have been lagging behind the social media growth. This paper thus attempts to understand the effects of content types on brand community engagement (likes, comments, and shares) in the understudied yet important country of Thailand using a comprehensive framework. This study collected 1,574 posts from 183 Facebook pages in nine brand categories. Content analysis was conducted to extract the content type of each post. The main study explored post-type effects together with the moderating influences of the brand category (FMCGs vs. non-FMCGs) and brand internationalisation (global vs. local brands). The research also explored real cases of Facebook posts in nine brand categories and compared the influence of posts on fan engagement. The findings showed that different content types were utilised among brand categories and brand groups, but above all entertaining posts received the highest fan engagement. Both FMCG and global brands significantly moderated several relationships between post types and fan engagement. There were a small number of posts in some brand categories due to the nature of each industry. Recommendations are made regarding an effective content strategy to enhance Facebook page engagement for marketers and social media managers.

Digital and virtual strategies to advance community stakeholder engagement in research during COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the adversity presented by COVID-19 pandemic, it also pushed for experimenting with innovative strategies for community engagement. The Community Research Advisory Council (C-RAC) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), is an initiative to promote community engagement in research. COVID-19 rendered it impossible for C-RAC to conduct its meetings all of which have historically been in person. We describe the experience of advancing the work of the C-RAC during COVID-19 using digital and virtual strategies. Since March 2020, C-RAC transitioned from in person to virtual meetings. The needs assessment was conducted among C-RAC members, and individualized solutions provided for a successful virtual engagement. The usual working schedule was altered to respond to COVID-19 and promote community engaged research. Attendance to C-RAC meetings before and after the transition to virtual operation increased from 69% to 76% among C-RAC members from the community. In addition, the C-RAC launched new initiatives and in eighteen months since January 2020, it conducted 50 highly rated research reviews for 20 research teams. The experience of the C-RAC demonstrates that when community needs are assessed and addressed, and technical support is provided, digital strategies can lead to greater community collaborations.

The Texas Community-Engagement Research Alliance Against COVID-19 in Disproportionately Affected Communities (TX CEAL) Consortium.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires urgent implementation of effective community-engaged strategies to enhance education, awareness, and inclusion of underserved communities in prevention, mitigation, and treatment efforts. The Texas Community-Engagement Alliance Consortium was established with support from the United States' National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct community-engaged projects in selected geographic locations with a high proportion of medically underserved minority groups with a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 disease and hospitalizations. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Consortium. The Consortium organized seven projects with focused activities to address COVID-19 clinical and vaccine trials in highly affected counties, as well as critical statewide efforts. Five Texas counties (Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Hidalgo, and Tarrant) were chosen by NIH because of high concentrations of underserved minority communities, existing community infrastructure, ongoing efforts against COVID-19, and disproportionate burden of COVID-19. Policies and practices can contribute to disparities in COVID-19 risk, morbidity, and mortality. Community engagement is an essential element for effective public health strategies in medically underserved minority areas. Working with partners, the Consortium will use community engagement strategies to address COVID-19 disparities.

Community-Engaged Strategies for Recruitment of Korean Americans in Community-Based Research Studies

With increasing numbers of researchers targeting ethnic minorities to address health disparities, it is important to address the unique needs of Korean American (KA) older adults—a “hard to reach” yet one of the most rapidly increasing ethnic and age groups in the nation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the main barriers to research participation and to identify facilitators for recruitment of older KAs. We have analyzed recruitment data pertaining to more than 10 community-based KA research studies we have conducted for the last ten years. There were a number of unique recruitment challenges in regard to the culture, language, and sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. Examples of effective recruitment strategies included: aligning the research agenda with the priorities of the community; establishing collaboration with ethnic churches and ethnic media; recruiting and training bilingual volunteers and community health workers; and placing liaison research staff in the community.

A health promotion approach to emergency management: effective community engagement strategies from five cases.

Summary Community engagement is crucial for controlling disease outbreak and mitigating natural and industrial disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic has reconfirmed the need to elevate community engagement to build equity, trust and sustained action in future health promotion preparedness strategies. Using the health promotion strategy of strengthening community action enhances the opportunity for better outcomes. There is, therefore, a need to improve our understanding of community engagement practices during crises, scale-up good community engagement initiatives, and improve and sustain people-centered approaches to emergency responses. This paper presents five case studies from the United States, Singapore, Sierra Leone, Kenya and South Africa that demonstrate the potential strengths that can be nurtured to build resilience in local communities to help mitigate the impact of disasters and emergencies. The case studies highlight the importance of co-developing relevant education and communication strategies, amplifying the role of community leaders, empowering community members to achieve shared goals, assessing and adapting to changing contexts, pre-planning and readiness for future emergencies and acknowledgement of historic context.