Aligning Community-Engaged Research to Context

Abstract

Community-engaged research is understood as existing on a continuum from less to more community engagement, defined by participation and decision-making authority. It has been widely assumed that more is better than less engagement. However, we argue that what makes for good community engagement is not simply the extent but the fit or alignment between the intended approach and the various contexts shaping the research projects. This article draws on case studies from three Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Science Core Centers (Harvard University, UC Davis and University of Arizona,) to illustrate the ways in which community engagement approaches have been fit to different contexts and the successes and challenges experienced in each case. We analyze the processes through which the CECs work with researchers and community leaders to develop place-based community engagement approaches and find that different strategies are called for to fit distinct contexts. We find that alignment of the scale and scope of the environmental health issue and related research project, the capacities and resources of the researchers and community leaders, and the influences of the sociopolitical environment are critical for understanding and designing effective and equitable engagement approaches. These cases demonstrate that the types and degrees of alignment in community-engaged research projects are dynamic and evolve over time. Based on this analysis, we recommend that CBPR scholars and practitioners select a range of project planning and management techniques for designing and implementing their collaborative research approaches and both expect and allow for the dynamic and changing nature of alignment.

Community‐engaged Research Approaches: Multiple Pathways To Health Equity

“…Non-academic partners' involvement in certain phases of the research may, in this view, be more or less advantageous depending on their needs and interests and the larger context and goals of the collaborative effort. What works best for each project depends on a range of factors including the needs and interests of the non-academic partners, capabilities of the non-academic partners and researcher(s), and overall goals of the project (London et al, 2020). The "Science Shop" model (Andrade et al, 2018), for example, relies upon Science Shop staff members to link nonacademics' research questions to the appropriate researchers (usually graduate and undergraduate students) rather than cultivating close collaborative relationships between the two parties.…”

“…One such model conceptualizes CEnR partnership practices as forming a continuum from more to less community involvement (McCloskey et al, 2011). While useful, this conceptualization highlights only a single dimension of CEnR-the amount of community participation-while sidelining equally important dimensions such who and what defines "the community," the roles played by the project's various contributors and participants, the outcomes valued by those same actors, the change strategies employed as part of the project's "action" dimension, and the locus of intervention for those change tactics (London et al, 2020). Another popular model links CEnR practices to their roots in the Global North (e.g.…”

Using a Community-Based Participatory Mixed Methods Research Approach to Develop, Evaluate, and Refine a Nutrition Intervention to Replace Sugary Drinks with Filtered Tap Water among Predominantly Central-American Immigrant Families with Infants and Toddlers: The Water Up @Home Pilot Evaluation Study

“…CBPR best practices have been associated with outcomes and partnership sustainability [ 3 ]. Third, longitudinal evaluations of this partnership would be ideal as community engagement is a dynamic process subject to influences of the sociopolitical environment, changes in priorities, capacities, and resources of researchers and community leaders [ 60 ]. Despite these limitations, these findings raise important questions about the possibility of addressing safety of tap water as a potential approach to reduce SSB and juice consumption in this population.…”

“It’s Time to Represent”: shifting the paradigm to improve the quality of inputs into value assessment frameworks

“…3,5,6 Consensus building and developing shared goals for research also create a solid foundation of engagement and can lead to long-term partnerships. 4,7 Investing the time before a study to learn about the community of focus will allow researchers to personalize recruitment and retention methods to include contextual factors relevant to a community and make potential participants feel like "more than a number." 3,4 Equally important is continued interaction with the community upon study completion.…”