Clinical and Translational Science Awards and Community Engagement

Abstract

While much attention is devoted to the slow process of cutting-edge “bench science” finding its way to clinical translation, less attention is paid to the fact that basic prevention messages, tests, and interventions never find their way into communities. The NIH Clinical Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program seeks to address a broad mission of improving health, including both speeding up the incorporation of basic science discoveries throughout the clinical research pipeline as well as incorporating concerns of communities and practices into research agendas. The preventive medicine community now has an important opportunity to marry their mission of promoting and expanding prevention in communities to the nation's medical research agenda. This article suggests opportunities for collaboration.

Developing relevant assessments of community-engaged research partnerships: A community-based participatory approach to evaluating clinical and health research study teams

“…The Partnership Background and Sustainability Domain includes existing measures of the composition, diversity, and structure of health research partnerships, including the community-identified health priorities of focus and the degree of CE on the spectrum of CEnR [ 5 , 6 ]. This domain also includes questions regarding partners’ support for the partnership over time and the sustainability of the partnership [ 14 ].…”

“…First, validated assessments of CEnR partnerships published in peer-reviewed journals were collected and reviewed for relevance. Over 120 distinct questions derived from published assessments of CEnR were identified [1,5,6,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…This paper presents an evaluation of health research partnerships supported by a CTSA hub, the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR). A community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach was used to evaluate community-engaged research (CEnR) partnerships working across the spectrum of CE [ 5 , 6 ]. This study contributes to translational science by demonstrating how CEnR partnerships can be evaluated by health research centers using CBPR approaches.…”

Helping Basic Scientists Engage With Community Partners to Enrich and Accelerate Translational Research

“…Because it has the potential to span the translational spectrum, it avoids both the delays in translation that are associated with research that is positioned narrowly on the spectrum 4 and the tendency to focus community engagement research only on T3 or T4 aims. 5 …”

A Community Engagement Advisory Board as a strategy to improve research engagement and build institutional capacity for community-engaged research

“…For example, in T1 research (Translation to humans), community engagement is essential to inform research needs and priorities and identify ethical concerns associated with a research project [5]. Major community engagement goals of T2–T3 research (translation to patients and practice) are to partner with patient stakeholder/advocacy groups and community-based organizations to increase the cultural appropriateness of research objectives and to engage and recruit research participants [6]. Community engagement goals of T4 research (translation to populations) include determining the best methods for dissemination and adoption of new treatments, establishing community monitoring groups to ensure equitable access, and identifying unintended consequences for vulnerable patient groups [7, 8].…”