Lessons learned from a virtual Community-Based Participatory Research project: prioritizing needs of people who have diabetes and experiences of homelessness to co-design a participatory action project.

In Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), we value peoples' lived experiences as knowledge and believe that it can help in the design of research projects. In these projects, people with similar lived experiences work with researchers to design a research advocacy project that will make meaningful changes in their community. Trust and respect between all team members are essential for working well together. Establishing trust and respect can be difficult, especially when done virtually. We virtually convened a committee and completed a CBPR project. Our group consisted of seven people with lived experience of diabetes and homelessness and three academic researchers in Calgary, Alberta. We met every two weeks between June 2021 and May 2022 to explore possible topics for our CBPR project, which we narrowed down to their top priority. As we reflected on our experience of working together, we came up with four categories of lessons learned: i) technical challenges, ii) building rapport, iii) driving engagement, and iv) challenges of transitioning from virtual to in-person meeting format. While our experience presented its challenges, we found working virtually to create a CBPR project is possible and can be meaningful for all group members.