Community Engagement in the CTSA Program: Stakeholder Responses from a National Delphi Process

Abstract

In response to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee's December 2012 public request for stakeholder input on the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, two nonprofit organizations, the Center for Community Health Education Research and Service, Inc. (CCHERS) and Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH), solicited feedback from CTSA stakeholders using the Delphi method. Academic and community stakeholders were invited to participate in the Delphi, which is an exploratory method used for group consensus building. Six questions posed by the IOM Committee to an invited panel on community engagement were electronically sent to stakeholders. In Round 1 stakeholder responses were coded thematically and then tallied. Round 2 asked stakeholders to state their level of agreement with each of the themes using a Likert scale. Finally, in Round 3 the group was asked to rank the Round 2 based on potential impact for the CTSA program and implementation feasibility. The benefits of community engagement in clinical and translational research as well as the need to integrate community engagement across all components of the CTSA program were common themes. Respondents expressed skepticism as to the feasibility of strengthening CTSA community engagement. Clin Trans Sci 2014;

Community engagement in patient-centered outcomes research: Benefits, barriers, and measurement

“…With respect to strategies for overcoming engagement, there was not a great degree of consensus among the group as to which strategies might be most effective. Twenty-five percent of participants Improves the appropriateness of the research 6.06% (2) 0.00% (0) 18.18% (6) 33.33% (11) 42.42% (14) Lends credibility to the research 6.06% 23.03% (1) 21.21% 736.36% (12) 33.33% (11) Increases the capacity of the research team and the community 6.06% 2 ranked increase communications with community first, 21.43% ranked spending time getting to know community stakeholders first, and 25% ranked being kind, genuine, and respectful as first, the most effective strategy for overcoming engagement barriers. Interestingly, although there was agreement in round two about the importance of being kind, genuine, and respectfuland 25% ranked this item firsta quarter of respondents also considered it to be the least effective strategy for overcoming engagement barriers.…”

“…Similarly to our previous work exploring community engagement in the Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, to inform testimony to the Institute of Medicine [11], we employed the Delphi Method (Delphi) to determine the benefits and challenges associated with community engagement in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). In this instance we defined community as patients and those who work with them in the broader community.…”

Multimorbidity, chronic disease, and community health science

“…These awards were initiated and tied to a significant funding stream, to provide training and research support for up to 60 medical schools for translational science—from proof‐of‐concept studies, to efficacy and effectiveness studies, to behavioral research and community engagement. However, a recent study among community engagement stakeholders expressed skepticism about the current role of the community in the CTSA program because the requirement for engaging the community has been removed from the most recent funding announcement, and other studies have found a reduced role for the community in CTSA leadership activities …”

Convergence Despite Divergence: Views of Academic and Community Stakeholders about the Ethics of Community-Engaged Research

“…Increasingly used in CEnR research, 20 the Delphi technique solicits informed opinions on the ranking and ratings of a given topic to inform practice, policy, or clinical decision-making. 21 A strength of the Delphi method among the consensus methods is its use of an anonymous survey because social influence (eg, participant pressure to converge with group opinion) is reduced.…”