Partnering with organisations beyond academia through strategic collaboration for research and mobilisation in immigrant/ethnic-minority communities

Abstract

Community-engaged research needs involving community organisations as partners in research. Often, however, considerations regarding developing a meaningful partnership with community organisations are not highlighted. Researchers need to identify the most appropriate organisation with which to engage and their capacity to be involved. Researchers tend to involve organisations based on their connection to potential participants, which relationship often ends after achieving this objective. Further, the partner organisation may not have the capacity to contribute meaningfully to the research process. As such, it is the researchers’ responsibility to build capacity within their partner organisations to encourage more sustainable and meaningful community-engaged research. Organisations pertinent to immigrant/ethnic-minority communities fall into three sectors: public, private and non-profit. While public and private sectors play an important role in addressing issues among immigrant/ethnic-minority communities, their contribution as research partners may be limited. Involving the non-profit sector, which tends to be more accessible and utilitarian and includes both grassroots associations (GAs) and immigrant service providing organisations (ISPOs), is more likely to result in mutually beneficial research partnerships and enhanced community engagement. GAs tend to be deeply rooted within, and thus are often truly representative of, the community. As they may not fully understand their importance from a researcher’s perspective, nor have time for research, capacity-building activities are required to address these limitations. Additionally, ISPOs may have a different understanding of research and research priorities. Understanding the difference in perspectives and needs of these organisations, building trust and creating capacity building opportunities are important steps for researchers to consider towards building durable partnerships.

Patient-Identified Solutions to Primary Care Access Barriers in Canada: The Viewpoints of Nepalese Immigrant Community Members

“… 18 , 19 We also engaged with the social-cultural organizations and community champions during the study which contributed to increased research in the community. 22 A limitation of this study is the susceptibility of the FGDs to biases. There is a chance of being influenced by more dominant participants during group discussions.…”

“… 19 , 20 However, such research needs to involve specific communities in the research to effectively identify and develop solutions that work for them. 21 , 22 Engaging and involving community members in health research ensures that community members’ voices will be reflected in the said research. 19 , 23 , 24 This further ensures that research-based decision-making will reflect the voices of the community members and is more likely to meet their health needs.…”

Who is in the sample? An analysis of real and surrogate users as participants in user study research in the information technology fields

“…The authors find the offering of a ‘thank you’ such as a gift card to be a nice touch. Others have also called for closer collaborations by academia with these other forms of organizations ( Lutchen, 2018 ; Mullin, 2021 ; Turin et al, 2022 ). Mix of Real and Surrogate Users : Some studies may require a substantial number of real users that may be unrealistic to recruit or pose a prohibitive expense.…”

“…The authors find the offering of a ‘thank you’ such as a gift card to be a nice touch. Others have also called for closer collaborations by academia with these other forms of organizations ( Lutchen, 2018 ; Mullin, 2021 ; Turin et al, 2022 ).…”

Patient-reported experiences in primary health care access of Nepalese immigrant women in Canada

“…PHC providers also need to be more culturally sensitive and culturally competent in providing quality health-care services. Future research needs to be tailored with a solution-oriented approach where the communities are involved in the research process (Turin et al , 2021a; 2022) to prioritize the barriers and co-identify the solutions to maximize the effectiveness and socio-cultural competence of the addressing measures (Turin et al , 2021b).…”