We aimed to disseminate reliable COVID-19 information to the Black and Latino communities of Baltimore City, Maryland, between July 2020 and December 2022. With community partners, we disseminated evidence-based COVID-19 information via grassroots and digital strategies, including Hopkins Opportunity for Participant Engagement, and connected volunteers to COVID-19 research. Using a multimodal approach facilitated dissemination of reliable information and raised awareness of research; evaluation of trust is ongoing. Robust, multimodal strategies are needed to foster trust and equity among diverse communities. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(S1):S69-S73. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307492).
COVID-19 , Information Dissemination , Humans , Baltimore , Hispanic or Latino , Trust , Black or African American
The Community Research Advisory Council (C-RAC) of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research was established in 2009 to provide community-engaged research consultation services. In 2016-2017, C-RAC members and researchers were surveyed on their consultation experiences. Survey results and a 2019 stakeholder meeting proceeding helped redesign the consultation services. Transitioning to virtual consultations during COVID-19, the redesigning involved increasing visibility, providing consultation materials in advance, expanding member training, and effective communications. An increase in consultations from 28 (2009-2017) to 114 (2020-2022) was observed. Implementing stakeholder-researcher inputs is critical to holistic and sustained community-engaged research.
Community-Research Advisory Councils (C-RAC) provide a unique mechanism for building sustainable community-academic partnership, fostering bidirectional understanding of complex research issues, disseminating timely research findings, and thereby improving public trust in science. Created in 2009, the Johns Hopkins C-RAC has a mission to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) of stakeholders across the entire research continuum. It has nurtured over a decade of partnership among community and academic stakeholders toward addressing health disparity, health equity, structural racism, and discrimination. Evidence of successful strategies to ensure DEI in partnership and lessons learned are illustrated in this special communication.
Despite the adversity presented by COVID-19 pandemic, it also pushed for experimenting with innovative strategies for community engagement. The Community Research Advisory Council (C-RAC) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), is an initiative to promote community engagement in research. COVID-19 rendered it impossible for C-RAC to conduct its meetings all of which have historically been in person. We describe the experience of advancing the work of the C-RAC during COVID-19 using digital and virtual strategies. Since March 2020, C-RAC transitioned from in person to virtual meetings. The needs assessment was conducted among C-RAC members, and individualized solutions provided for a successful virtual engagement. The usual working schedule was altered to respond to COVID-19 and promote community engaged research. Attendance to C-RAC meetings before and after the transition to virtual operation increased from 69% to 76% among C-RAC members from the community. In addition, the C-RAC launched new initiatives and in eighteen months since January 2020, it conducted 50 highly rated research reviews for 20 research teams. The experience of the C-RAC demonstrates that when community needs are assessed and addressed, and technical support is provided, digital strategies can lead to greater community collaborations.
Community research advisory councils (C-RAC) bring together community members with interest in research to support design, evaluation, and dissemination of research in the communities they represent. There are few ways for early career researchers, such as TL1 trainees, to develop skills in community-engaged research, and there are limited opportunities for C-RAC members to influence early career researchers. In our novel training collaboration, TL1 trainees presented their research projects to C-RAC members who provided feedback. We present on initial evidence of student learning and summarize lessons learned that TL1 programs and C-RACs can incorporate into future collaborations.
BACKGROUND: The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had substantial global morbidity and mortality. Clinical research related to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19 is a top priority. Effective and efficient recruitment is challenging even without added constraints of a global pandemic. Recruitment registries offer a potential solution to slow or difficult recruitment. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a digital research recruitment registry to optimize awareness and participant enrollment for COVID-19-related research in Baltimore and to report preliminary results. METHODS: Planning began in March 2020, and the registry launched in July 2020. The primary recruitment mechanisms include electronic medical record data, postcards distributed at testing sites, and digital advertising campaigns. Following consent in a Research Electronic Data Capture survey, participants answer questions related to COVID-19 exposure, testing, and willingness to participate in research. Branching logic presents participants with studies they might be eligible for. RESULTS: As of March 24, 2021, 9010 participants have enrolled, and 64.2% are female, 80.6% are White, 9.4% are Black or African American, and 6% are Hispanic or Latino. Phone outreach has had the highest response rate (13.1%), followed by email (11.9%), text (11.4%), and patient portal message (9.4%). Eleven study teams have utilized the registry, and 4596 matches have been made between study teams and interested volunteers. CONCLUSION: Effective and efficient recruitment strategies are more important now than ever due to the time-limited nature of COVID-19 research. Pilot efforts have been successful in connecting interested participants with recruiting study teams.
