Virtual engagement of under-resourced communities: Lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic for creating crisis-resistant research infrastructure

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased need to conduct research and community engagement using digital methods. Unfortunately, the shift away from in-person research activities can make it difficult to engage and recruit participants from under-resourced communities that lack adequate digital infrastructure. At the beginning of the pandemic, our team recognized that imminent lockdowns would significantly disrupt ongoing engagement with low-income housing resident community partners and that we would ultimately bear responsibility if that occurred. This manuscript outlines the development of methods designed to create capacity for virtual engagement with a community advisory board that were subsequently applied to a longitudinal mixed-methods study. We describe how our experience engaging low-income housing residents during the height of the pandemic influenced the approach and offer guidelines useful for engaging under-resourced communities regardless of setting. Of these, a strong commitment to providing technology, unlimited data connectivity, and basic digital literacy training/technical support is most important. While each of these is essential and failure in any one area will reduce overall effectiveness of the effort, providing adequate technical support while maintaining ongoing relationships with community members is the most important and resource-intensive.

Developing a peer-led intervention to promote COVID-19 testing in low-income housing settings

“…While led by EVMS researchers, faculty members associated with the Housing Collaborative now include co-investigators from several other academic institutions, including Hampton University, Harvard School of Public Health, Norfolk State University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Washington University in St. Louis. The longstanding research partnership spans several grant-funded projects with topics ranging from respiratory health and childhood asthma to studies examining HUD-mandated smoke-free public housing (17)(18)(19)(20). Members of the HCCAB contribute to all stages of research, including the development of longterm research agendas and choosing topics covered in individual grant submissions.…”

“…Members of the HCCAB and research participants were provided with tablets with high definition webcam, unlimited data connectivity, and, most importantly, ongoing technical support should they experience any problems while participating in study activities. A detailed description of our digital access capacitybuilding method, which was developed to ensure that engagement with the HCCAB would not be interrupted by the pandemic, is available elsewhere (17).…”

A program evaluation of an international, intercultural e-community-engagement initiative

“…There are references to virtual or remote community engagement in the literature which is essentially what we mean when we use the term e-community-engagement. For example, Zisman-Ilani et al (2022) and Plunk et al (2022) provide examples of real-world, field-based e-communityengagement in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the webpages of HEIs reference virtual and online community engagement in the context of higher education, the scholarly literature does not yet reflect these trends.…”

“…For example, Zisman-Ilani et al. (2022) and Plunk et al. (2022) provide examples of real-world, field-based e-community-engagement in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”