Promoting Community and Population Health in Public Health and Medicine: A Stepwise Guide to Initiating and Conducting Community-engaged Research (original) (raw)

Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement: A Conceptual Model to Advance Health Equity through Transformed Systems for Health Organizing Committee for Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement in Health & Health Care Programs & Policies

Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement: A Conceptual Model to Advance Health Equity through Transformed Systems for Health, 2022

The National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium: Collaboration for a Value & Science-Driven Health System, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and guidance from an Organizing Committee, is advancing a project to identify concepts and metrics that can best assess the extent, process, and impact of community engagement. The Organizing Committee comprises experts in community engagement—community leaders, researchers, and policy advisors—who are diverse in many ways, including geographic location, race and ethnicity, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity (see Box 1). This effort aims to provide community-engaged, effective, and evidence-based tools to those who want to measure engagement to ensure that it is meaningful and impactful, emphasizing equity as a critical input and outcome. As work began on the project, the Organizing Committee realized the need for a conceptual model illustrating the dynamic relationship between community engagement and improved health and health care outcomes. This commentary will describe how the Organizing Committee arrived at the conceptual model, the critical content that the model contains and expresses, and how the model can be used to assess meaningful community engagement.

Engaging the Community in the Dissemination, Implementation, and Improvement of Health-Related Research

Clinical and Translational Science, 2015

To help maximize the real-world applicability of available interventions in clinical and community healthcare practice, there has been greater emphasis over the past two decades on engaging local communities in health-related research. While there have been numerous successful community-academic partnered collaborations, there continues to be a need to articulate the common barriers experienced during the evolution of these partnerships, and to provide a roadmap for best practices that engage healthcare providers, patients, families, caregivers, community leaders, healthcare systems, public agencies and academic medical centers. To this end, this paper presents a summary of a forum discussion from the

Review of community-based research: assessing partnership approaches to improve public health

… review of public health, 1998

Community-based research in public health focuses on social, structural, and physical environmental inequities through active involvement of community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process. Partners contribute their expertise to enhance understanding of a given phenomenon and to integrate the knowledge gained with action to benefit the community involved. This review provides a synthesis of key principles of community-based research, examines its place within the context of different scientific paradigms, discusses rationales for its use, and explores major challenges and facilitating factors and their implications for conducting effective community-based research aimed at improving the public's health.

Partnerships, Processes, and Outcomes: A Health Equity–Focused Scoping Meta-Review of Community-Engaged Scholarship

Annual Review of Public Health

In recent decades, there has been remarkable growth in scholarship examining the usefulness of community-engaged research (CEnR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) for eliminating health inequities.This article seeks to synthesize the extant literature of systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and other related reviews regarding the context, processes, and research designs and interventions underlying CEnR that optimize its effectiveness. Through a scoping review, we have utilized an empirically derived framework of CBPR to map this literature and identify key findings and priorities for future research. Our study found 100 reviews of CEnR that largely support the CBPR conceptual framework.

Leveraging Community Expertise to Advance Health Equity: Principles and Strategies for Community Engagement

2021

Given the COVID-19 pandemic's disproportionate effects on people of colorand increased attention to racial justice in the US, initiatives to increase health equity are sprouting up across the country (Ndugga, Artiga, and Pham 2021). These efforts range from addressing immediate health and social needs among communities most affected by the pandemic's impacts to broader and longer-range policy changes designed to eliminate systemic barriers to good health. This brief examines the role of community engagement in informing and advancing efforts to eradicate health inequities. Here, we define "community engagement" as collaborating and sharing power with communities to identify concerns and develop and implement solutions.This brief draws on interviews with representatives from national organizations, health equity experts, and stakeholders in four states, including representatives from state agencies, community-based organizations (CBOs), consumer advocacy groups, and...

Community-Driven Research Agenda to Reduce Health Disparities

Clinical and translational science, 2015

This paper describes how a new regional campus of an academic health center engaged in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) process to set a community-driven research agenda to address health disparities. The campus is situated among growing Marshallese and Hispanic populations that face significant health disparities. In 2013, with support from the Translational Research Institute, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Northwest began building its research capacity in the region with the goal of developing a community-driven research agenda for the campus. While many researchers engage in some form of community-engaged research, using a CBPR process to set the research agenda for an entire campus is unique. Utilizing multiple levels of engagement, three research areas were chosen by the community: (1) chronic disease management and prevention; (2) obesity and physical activity; and (3) access to culturally appropriate healthcare. In only 18 months, the CBPR col...

Aligning the Goals of Community-Engaged Research: Why and How Academic Health Centers Can Successfully Engage With Communities to Improve Health

Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 2012

Community engagement (CE) and community-engaged research (CEnR) are increasingly viewed as the keystone to translational medicine and improving the health of the nation. In this article, the authors seek to assist academic health centers (AHCs) in learning how to better engage with their communities and build a CEnR agenda by suggesting five steps: defining community and identify partners; learning the etiquette of community engagement; building a sustainable network of CEnR researchers; recognizing that CEnR will require the development of new methodologies; and improving translation and dissemination plans. Health disparities that lead to uneven access to and quality of care as well as high costs will persist without a CEnR agenda that finds answers to both medical and public health questions. One of the biggest barriers toward a national CEnR agenda, however, are the historical structures and processes of an AHC-including the complexities of how institutional review boards operate, accounting practices and indirect funding policies, and tenure and promotion paths. Changing institutional culture starts with the leadership and commitment of top decision-makers in an institution. By aligning the motivations and goals of their researchers, clinicians, and community members into a vision of a healthier population, AHC Correspondence should be addressed to Ms. Cook,

Community Engagement and Health Equity

The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) is a diverse team of academic and community members interested in examining existing health disparities and in improving the health of those experiencing social or economic disadvantage. In 2010, HEAT designed a Heart Health study to examine the causes of high blood pressure and heart disease among African Americans living in Tallahassee, Florida. The study aimed to understand how the social environment, neighborhood conditions, social relationships, experience of stress, and the stress of racism impacts health. This paper discusses the community engagement plan used to involve Tallahassee residents in a dialogue and conversation about the HEAT Heart Health (HHH) Study. Using the example of HHH, we argue for a community engagement approach that involves community residents in all processes of a research study, including the reporting of findings.

Engage for Equity: A Long-Term Study of Community-Based Participatory Research and Community-Engaged Research Practices and Outcomes

Health Education & Behavior, 2020

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) and community-engaged research have been established in the past 25 years as valued research approaches within health education, public health, and other health and social sciences for their effectiveness in reducing inequities. While early literature focused on partnering principles and processes, within the past decade, individual studies, as well as systematic reviews, have increasingly documented outcomes in community support and empowerment, sustained partnerships, healthier behaviors, policy changes, and health improvements. Despite enhanced focus on research and health outcomes, the science lags behind the practice. CBPR partnering pathways that result in outcomes remain little understood, with few studies documenting best practices. Since 2006, the University of New Mexico Center for Participatory Research with the University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute and partners across the country has engaged in tar...

Aligning the Goals of Community-Engaged Research

Academic Medicine, 2012

Community engagement (CE) and community-engaged research (CEnR) are increasingly viewed as the keystone to translational medicine and improving the health of the nation. In this article, the authors seek to assist academic health centers (AHCs) in learning how to better engage with their communities and build a CEnR agenda by suggesting five steps: defining community and identify partners; learning the etiquette of community engagement; building a sustainable network of CEnR researchers; recognizing that CEnR will require the development of new methodologies; and improving translation and dissemination plans. Health disparities that lead to uneven access to and quality of care as well as high costs will persist without a CEnR agenda that finds answers to both medical and public health questions. One of the biggest barriers toward a national CEnR agenda, however, are the historical structures and processes of an AHC -including the complexities of how institutional review boards operate, accounting practices and indirect funding policies, and tenure and promotion paths. Changing institutional culture starts with the leadership and commitment of top decision-makers in an institution. By aligning the motivations and goals of their researchers, clinicians, and community members into a vision of a healthier population, AHC Correspondence should be addressed to Ms. Cook,