Community engagement in tuberculosis research: the EU-Patient-cEntric clinicAl tRial pLatforms (EU-PEARL) experience

An unclosed loop: Perspectives of community engagement in infectious disease clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Community engagement is defined as an approach that aims to improve the conduct of research and its outcomes, through the ongoing collaboration of research-study staff and communities, throughout the research process (from protocol development stages to dissemination activities) [ 5 ]. These collaborations should be based on trustworthy relationships [ 6 ] and Dada and associates have proposed four R’s that should be embedded in CE processes, which (if implemented) are said to offer benefits for fostering effective engagement. Through the four R’s it is posed that relationships between CE trial staff and communities must be reciprocal and that communities should be approached in a contextually, culturally, and linguistically appropriate manner, and that relatable examples must be used to help people understand various facets of the study.…”

“…Consultation with communities/leaders/representatives throughout the study duration (5,13) as well as having an in-depth understanding of communities and their needs [ 7 ] should not be considered as secondary parts of CE. Instead, engaging with these parties can promote effective CE through these individuals advocating for health research studies [ 6 ], which might have implications for participation in clinical trials. Considering this, formative research into the socio-cultural and political factors that are characteristic of a given community can help cultivate a holistic understanding of communities as unique systems (4, 12).…”

“…The need for these guidelines is tied to advocation that CE must be considered as central to effective biomedical research processes that may have implications for infectious-disease treatments [ 6 ]. This seems to be crucial in SSA contexts with a high burden of diseases like HIV [ 1 , 17 ]) and TB [ 2 ].…”

World Tuberculosis Day 2023 theme “Yes! We Can End TB!”

“…All these need to be factored in for a comprehensive worldwide TB control plan. In this special IJID World TB Day issue to commemorate World TB Day, we present nine reports covering several of these aspects: impacts of COVID-19 on the diagnosis of TB, MDR-TB, and on mortality [15] ; characterization of immune inflammation of TB-COVID-19 coinfection [16] ; the impact of COVID-19 on increasing non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes [17] ; updated drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment regimens [18] ; need of new formulations of TB drugs, especially for MDR-TB, for children [19] ; importance of the engagement of those affected by TB in the clinical trials [20] ; new proposed strategies to design new TB vaccines, such as the mRNA technology [21] ; characterization of the TB vaccine-induced immunity in newborns [22] ; the necessity to have genomic and geospatial epidemiology of Mtb at a local level, as reported in Oman [23] ; and the urgent need to have programmatic management of TB preventive treatment (PMTPT) [24] .…”