A Logic Model for Community Engagement Within the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium

Abstract

The Clinical Translation Science Award (CTSA) initiative calls upon academic health centers to engage communities around a clinical research relationship measured ultimately in terms of public health. Among a few initiatives involving university accountability for advancing public interests, a small CTSA workgroup devised a community engagement (CE) logic model that organizes common activities within a university-community infrastructure to facilitate community engagement in research. While the model focuses on the range of institutional CE inputs, it purposefully does not include an approach for assessing how community engagement influences research implementation and outcomes. Rather, with communities and individuals beginning to transition into new research roles, this article emphasizes studying community engagement through specific relationship types and assessing how expanded research teams contribute to the full spectrum of translational science. The authors propose a typology consisting of three relationship types—engagement, collaboration and shared leadership—to provide a foundation for investigating community–academic contributions to the new CTSA research paradigm. The typology shifts attention from specific community–academic activities and, instead, encourages analyses focused on measuring the strength of relationships through variables like synergy and trust. The collaborative study of CE relationships will inform an understanding of CTSA infrastructure development in support of translational research and its goal, which is expressed in the logic model: better science, better answers, better population health.

Use of Community Engagement Strategies to Increase Research Participation in Practice-based Research Networks (PBRNs)

“…15 This study adds to the mounting evidence that community engagement is an important strategy for improving health research, the benefits of which include increased recruitment/retention, greater diversity of participants, more representative cohorts, and increased trust between community members and researchers. 21 …”

Report on CTSA Consortium Use of the Community Engagement Consulting Service

“…This is supported by previous literature in this journal citing few NIH-funded studies reporting CE activities, 9 the lack of extensive CEnR experience at some institutions (thereby potentially underestimating the importance and complexities of building community relationships), and the need for increased institutional CEnR capacity. 4,10–13 Measures should address development in three relationship categories – engagement, partnership, and collaboration 14 , which could include AMC leadership infrastructural and financial support, and intra-institutional network development (including research activities with non-traditional departments and community organizations).…”

Harnessing the Power of Community-Based Participatory Research: Examining Knowledge, Action, and Consciousness in the PROUD Study

“…Some researchers highlight different aspects of participation including attention to who is involved and in what ways (e.g., Butterfoss, 2006;Khodyakov et al, 2012). Others focus on the quality and/or qualities of partnerships, exploring aspects such as collaboration (e.g., Marek, Brock, & Savla, 2014;Plumb, Collins, Cordeiro, & Kavanagh-Lynch, 2008), engagement (e.g., Lavelee, Williams, Tambor, & Deverka, 2012), involvement (Plumb et al, 2008), group dynamics (Barlow & Hurlock, 2012;Plumb et al, 2008;Schulz, Israel, & Lantz, 2003), and trust (e.g., Eder, Carter-Edwards, Hurd, Rumala, & Wallerstein, 2013). Caine, Salomons, and Simmons (2007) pointed out that by affirming and integrating traditional or local ways of knowing, participatory approaches to research have the potential to address the negative impacts of research that have positioned communities as passive objects.…”