Lessons from Two Latino Communities Working with Academic Partners to Increase Access to COVID-19 Testing.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to examine the experiences of community partners in a community-academic partnership to promote COVID-19 testing in two majority Latino communities. METHODS: We conducted semistructured, in-depth interviews in English and Spanish with community-based organization leaders and community health workers/promotoras (n = 10) from June to July 2021. Interviews focused on identifying partner roles in planning and testing implementation and evaluating communication among partners. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed in ATLAS.ti version 8.4.5. Analyses involved deductive and inductive approaches to identify key themes. RESULTS: Participants described both strengths and challenges to the collaborative approach within each of three core themes: building relationships in the time of COVID-19; uplifting existing community leadership; and commitment of the academic partners and community-based organizations to conduct partnership activities in Spanish. CONCLUSION: Community-academic partnerships that invest in strong relationships, community leadership, and a commitment to the community's preferred language offer a promising approach to addressing COVID-19 testing barriers. Findings provide direction for future research on how community members and academic partners can come together to inform strategies to continue addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Challenges and Lessons from Conducting a Community-Engaged Evaluation of a Community Advisory Board-A Case Study from Flint.

Community-engaged research often poses challenges due to exactly those qualities that make it desirable: it provides a new model of research that differs in many ways from top-down, university-led, prospectively designed approaches. While many have discussed the challenges to conducting community-engaged research, few have provided precise and generalizable lessons for how to surmount these challenges. Here we discuss the challenges experienced in a project that was community-engaged at three levels: 1) a research team consisting of an academic and a community partner as well as a community and academic research assistant, 2) the research team engaged with a Community Advisory Board called the CBOP-CERB (Community Based Organization Partners-Community Ethics Research Board) throughout the project, and 3) the research involved recruiting community participants from an area with a historical distrust of researchers and research: Flint Michigan. We also discuss administrative challenges that this multilevel community-engagement posed. Most important, we provide practical lessons in order for future community-engaged research to avoid or mitigate many of these challenges.

Infectious Disease Preparedness for Homeless Populations: Recommendations from a Community-Academic Partnership.

BACKGROUND: People experiencing homelessness are at increased risk of infectious disease transmission due to congregate living conditions, barriers to healthcare, and excess burden of underlying chronic disease. OBJECTIVES: We are a multisectoral community-academic partnership working to address the intersecting crises of homelessness and health disparities in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. We offer key recommendations for infectious disease preparedness and risk mitigation for homeless populations based on our ongoing community-based participatory research and lessons learned through COVID-19 response and Monkeypox preparations. LESSONS LEARNED: Infectious disease preparedness and response in homeless populations requires strong local partnerships; ongoing training and support for staff and volunteers of homeless shelters and service agencies; tailored outreach, education, and communication with people experiencing homelessness; and standardized processes for creating, disseminating, enforcing, and evaluating public health policies in homeless shelters. Consistency and open communication are key to a successful community-academic partnership. CONCLUSIONS: Community-academic partnerships are critical to effective infectious disease preparedness in homeless populations. The lessons learned from community-based participatory research with homeless communities and multisectoral partners on the frontline can improve future outbreak and pandemic response for people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable communities in the United States.

Implementing a Community Engagement Model to Develop a Community-Driven Oral Health Intervention.

BACKGROUND: Using community-engaged research may result in interventions that reduce infant oral health disparities in underserved populations. OBJECTIVE: Develop community partnerships to create a sustainable infant oral health program that meets specific community-identified needs and provides an interprofessional education experience. METHODS: Partnering with the Homewood Community Engagement Center, researchers engaged and surveyed key community partners to assess the need for an infant oral health invention. LESSONS LEARNED: Community-identified organizing principles and barriers became the framework for, "Healthy Teeth, Healthy Me," a community-driven infant oral health program. Barriers, like access to care, were addressed with community-specific solutions like agreements with local dental clinical for referrals. CONCLUSIONS: Community partnerships can be leveraged to develop oral health programs that fit specific community needs and provide resources to families at greatest risk for child dental caries. Community engagement can be used to modify the intervention to meet oral health needs of other vulnerable communities.

A Model of Community Health Worker Integration into Schools: Community-based Participatory Research in Action.

BACKGROUND: Schools are rich sites for collaborations between health and educational sectors. OBJECTIVES: To identify lessons learned from formation of a community-academic partnership and application of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to develop a model that integrates community health workers into schools. METHODS: Individuals from an academic medical center, a large public school district, and a community-based research institute applied CBPR principles to reimagine schools as a place for improving the health of children. LESSONS LEARNED: Three lessons emerged. Leveraging each team member's expertise centered the partnership on community strengths, co-learning, and stakeholder engagement. Adherence to CBPR's principles of power sharing and equity helped navigate the challenges of collaboration between large institutions. Early focus on sustainability helped address unexpected issues, build capacity, and boost advocacy. CONCLUSIONS: This partnership demonstrates how CBPR fosters conditions in which equitable partnerships between research institutions and public schools can thrive to promote childhood health.

Evaluating the Impact and Effectiveness of Flint's Community Ethics Review Board (CBOP-CERB): A Pilot Study.

In recognition of the importance of evaluation for funding, research, and quality improvement, a longstanding Community Advisory Board in Flint Michigan embarked on a process to evaluate their impact. The Community-Based Organization Partners (CBOP)-Community Ethics Review Board (CERB) engaged a research team composed of an academic researcher (Solomon Cargill) and a community partner (Spencer) to obtain funding, design and implement an evaluation of the CBOP-CERB. This evaluation study yielded two evaluations of the CBOP-CERB, one with researchers who had engaged with the CBOP-CERB and the other with Flint area community residents. The results of these two evaluations can serve to show other Community Advisory Boards how to establish and expand their impact, establish their worth for future funding, and how to articulate, evaluate, and achieve their goals.

Experiences and Lessons Learned From the RADx-UP Consortium Community Engagement Projects.

In this study, we used emerging community engagement frameworks to describe the structure and outcomes of a large-scale, community-engaged, research-to-practice initiative, RADx-UP. Qualitative methods were used to analyze survey and meeting data from 2022 for RADx-UP projects. Most projects had diverse partners, achieved moderate levels of community engagement, and experienced positive outcomes. Challenges related to engagement readiness and partnership functioning. These findings demonstrate that community engagement is measurable and valuable. However, additional support is needed to achieve the highest engagement. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(S5):S405-S409. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307615).

Community-Engaged Bidirectional Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication With Immigrant and Refugee Populations During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to assess an intervention that was created by a community-academic partnership to address COVID-19 health inequities. We evaluated a community-engaged bidirectional pandemic crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) framework with immigrant and refugee populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A 17-year community-engaged research partnership adopted a CERC framework in March 2020 to address COVID-19 prevention, testing, and socioeconomic impacts with immigrant and refugee groups in southeast Minnesota. The partnership used bidirectional communication between communication leaders and their social networks to refine messages, leverage resources, and advise policy makers. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation for intervention acceptability, feasibility, reach, adaptation, and sustainability through multisource data, including email communications, work group notes, semistructured interviews, and focus groups. RESULTS: The intervention reached at least 39 000 people in 9 months. It was implemented as intended and perceived efficacy was high. Frequent communication between community and academic partners allowed the team to respond rapidly to concerns and facilitated connection of community members to resources. Framework implementation also led to systems and policy changes to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee populations. CONCLUSIONS: Community-engaged CERC is feasible and sustainable and can reduce COVID-19 disparities through shared creation and dissemination of public health messages, enhanced connection to existing resources, and incorporation of community perspectives in regional pandemic mitigation policies.

Use of Community-Based Participatory Research Partnerships to Reduce COVID-19 Disparities Among Marshallese Pacific Islander and Latino Communities - Benton and Washington Counties, Arkansas, April-December 2020.

Marshallese and Latino communities in Benton and Washington counties, Arkansas, were disproportionately affected by COVID-19. We evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive community-based intervention to reduce COVID-19 disparities in these communities. We examined all laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases in the 2 counties reported from April 6, 2020, through December 28, 2020. A 2-sample serial t test for rate change was used to evaluate changes in case rates before and after implementation of the intervention. After implementation, the proportions of cases among Marshallese and Latino residents declined substantially and began to align more closely with the proportions of these 2 populations in the 2 counties. Infection rates remained lower throughout the evaluation period, and weekly incidence also approximated Marshallese and Latino population proportions. Leveraging community partnerships and tailoring activities to specific communities can successfully reduce disparities in incidence among populations at high-risk for COVID-19 .