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�Building Successful Researcher-Community Partnerships�

Bettye Anderson Frederic, MSN

Sarah L. Goff, MD, PhD

Kathleen Szegda, PhD, MS, MPH

Project ACCCES

January 13, 2022

Community-Engaged Research Training

Session I

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Welcome - SG

We are excited to be here leading this training on Building Successful Academic-Community Research Partnerships on behalf of Project ACCCES, A Collaboration to build Capacity for Community-engaged research in Springfield. Project ACCCES was founded through a partnership between Kathleen Szegda at the PHIWM and myself while I was on faculty at the UMass Medical School at Baystate Medical Center. Project ACCCES aims to foster community-researcher partnerships through trainings such as this and connecting potential partners.

We have just a few housekeeping items - please feel free to get up and move around as you need to. Please keep your microphones off unless you are speaking. Because the group is so large, we ask that you use the chat for questions and contributions unless we are specifically asking for people to share out loud.

We will start off today’s session with Introductions of our team. BAF, KS, SG

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Introductions

Please share in chat:

Your name/preferred pronouns
Your institution
Your departmental affiliation

Please respond to the poll question.

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Goals for the Workshop Series

Develop a shared understanding of:

Community engaged research (CEnR)
Benefits of CEnR
Factors that promote successful community - academic research partnerships
Equity and anti-racism in research partnerships

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Core Values

Health Equity Racial Justice

Source: Health Resources in Action- https://hria.org/2021/04/20/rootcauses/

KS

Health equity and racial justice are the core values for how we think about our community partnership work.

Some people may be familiar with these constructs but we want to make sure we all have a shared understanding. How we and others have approached this in our work has evolved over time. Many are probably familiar with the tree analogy being used to demonstrate how health inequities manifest, with health conditions being impacted by behaviors, which are impacted by social determinants of health (such as income and education) and root causes, such as racism, classism, ableism and forms of oppression. This tree expands on this by explicitly calling out dominant culture and narratives as the “soil” that the roots grow in. There has been more explicit focus on examining dominant culture and narrative as part of our anti-racism efforts in our community partnership and research work. For example, our community health needs assessment regional advisory council has made examination of how dominant culture - particularly white dominant culture - impacts the process, findings and products of our research process. Our community partners have felt strongly that is an important part of incorporating equity into our process.

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Consider in your partnerships and research

Changing the narrative
Questioning assumptions
Distribution of power

Advancing Racial Justice and

Health Equity

KS

Its been a learning journey as we work to advance health equity and racial justice in our community collaborations and research partnership work.

We’ll go into more detail over the course of the trainings, but wanted to introduce how we approach this work, by intentionally considering the following.

Changing the narrative - I mentioned dominant narratives in the previous slides. We’ll be speaking more to narrative during Part II of the training. For now, consider how narrative - such as what does a successful research project and partnership look like, who should be at the table, what drives health inequities - exist in your partnerships and research

Questioning the assumptions - what assumptions exist based on these narratives in your research and partnerships

How is power distributed based on dominant culture and these narratives

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Ground Rules

Please:

Share your perspectives
Respect differences (experiences, opinions, etc.)
Ask questions
Listen to understand
Share the “air time”
Open yourself to learning
Disagree (respectfully!) with us and each other

�

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What is CEnR and �Why Does it Matter?

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What does it mean to you?

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Language Matters

For today:

Community = people who live, work and play in a geographic location
Research = a systematic investigation aimed at producing generalizable knowledge

“Inconceivable!”… I do not think that word means

what you think it means

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What is CEnR?

Collaborative process between researchers and community partners
Generates knowledge that…

seeks to contribute to the academic discipline AND
strengthens the wellbeing of the community

Identifies stakeholder assets and incorporates into design and conduct of research process

https://community.vcu.edu/faculty-support-/cenr-support-at-vcu/what-is-community-engaged-research

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Why Do CEnR?

Promotes better research and translation of findings
Develops research responsive to community need
Increases capacity for community partners and researchers
Expands opportunities for funding

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Spectrum of Engagement

Increasing Levels of Engagement

Traditional Research

CBPR

Provide information

Obtain community perspectives

Work with community ensure concerns & aspirations considered

Partner with community

Support community led projects

*Adapted from International Association for Public Participation, 2014

Decision-making in community hands

KS

We use the spectrum of engagement to think about our collaborative work, including research partnerships. This model is commonly used and is based on the International Association for Public Participation’s spectrum of engagement. It has become more commonly used here because MDPH has adopted it in its community engagement guidance. To the left are lower levels of engagement with increasing engagement and partnership as you move to the right. Some more traditional research may not even fall on the spectrum. The right is community driven or led and would align with CBPR. Much community engaged research falls in-between. Consult might include discussing and obtaining input from community when thinking about what you might want to focus on. Collaborate might include have a community partner co-lead the project or have a community advisory board. We used this just yesterday to gauge where an advisory council felt like they felt on an assessment project that was aiming to move more towards the right.

ROADS Study

Goal: community driven, empower and collaborate
LWS approached about doing. Community orgs part of research team and decision-making, intentionally building capacity through our work

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Fostering Health Equity through Research Process

“Any serious effort to reduce health inequities will involve changing the distribution of power within society and global regions, empowering individuals and groups to represent strongly and effectively their needs and interests and, in so doing, to challenge and change the unfair and steeply graded distribution of social resources (the conditions for health) to which all, as citizens, have claims and rights.”

-- Final Report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health

From Jonathan Keller, Human Impact Partners, “Strategies to Advance Health Equity”

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�Community

Perspectives on CEnR �

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Themes

Importance of Strengths-based Approaches
Race & Burden of Educating Researchers
Communities Feeling Used
Importance of Early Engagement
Access to Participation
Negotiating Needs - Study Design
The Transformative Nature of CEnR

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What is the Community saying?

“…there was… a… project… at XX Health Center…. community members … highlight[ed]… the challenges in the community or… the resources… When I look at this list, it doesn’t really talk about… the positives… in the community. And that’s an equally important part of the discussion…”

- Healthcare Provider

Changing the Focus: Strengths and Opportunities vs. Deficits

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What is the Community saying?

“Our experience with research… was very community driven… in partnership with the university and yet we still ran into hurdles along the way in terms of the professors and students having a clear understanding about race… it put a lot of burden on the partners to play that role [of socio-cultural translators] because the research team didn’t necessarily have that expertise…”

- Community Organization Leader

Importance of Race & Burdens on Community Partners

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What is the Community saying?

I felt like I was actually making a difference for

my fellow dialysis patients and that my being [on the advisory board] actually made the study better. It was

transformative.

Community Advisory Board member on a study funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute

CEnR Can Be a Transformative Experience

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Panel Discussion

Airin Martinez and Ana Jaramillo

Lili Peacock-Chambers and Amy Sommer

Introductions
Panel Questions
Audience Questions

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Break

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Small Group Discussion Prompts

Introductions
What are your interests/areas of work?
What resonated with you from the panel? What did you want to learn more about?
How have you thought about and tried to incorporate equity when there are potential power imbalances in teams you work with? Whose job is it to do that?
How might you apply CEnR in your future work?

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Large Group Share

What stood out most from your discussion?

Panel - What did you want to learn more about?

Incorporating equity and power considerations

Applying CEnR

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Day 1 Wrap Up

Session #2 January 20, 9:00-11:00

Building Successful Partnerships
Power, Process, and Partnership
Panel - Community-Researcher Partners
Communicating to Engage

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