Panel Discussion 10 - Community-engaged Research 101: How to Build and Maintain Meaningful Community Partnerships

Community-engaged research (CEnR) approaches center community voices across all stages of research. By emphasizing community members’ contexts and lived experiences from the outset, CEnR can enhance the real-world impact of clinical research (Giusto et al., 2024). Despite the apparent benefits of CEnR, the practical ins and outs of building community partnerships are less clear to many. Directly tied to this year’s conference goal to increase the reach and impact of cognitive and behavioral therapies by accounting for contextual, cultural, and diverse factors in our research, this expert panel seeks to demystify CEnR and offer practical guidance for establishing and maintaining community partnerships. Panelists have extensive experience using a range of CEnR strategies (e.g., advisory boards, human-centered design, focus groups, ethnography) across different types of research (e.g., intervention development, efficacy/effectiveness research, implementation science) and diverse contexts (e.g., community mental health, hospitals, schools, states [Hawaii], public libraries). Panelists will present project specific and evidence-based approaches (e.g., community-based participatory research) for building community partnerships, highlighting unique opportunities and challenges that can arise when partnering with different communities (e.g., patients, providers, teachers, school staff, youth, library staff). Panelists will also share examples from their own CEnR projects of how partnership-building activities can be used to establish ethical and equitable partnerships with historically underserved communities (Alto et al., 2022; Knapp et al., 2023; Martinez et al., 2023). Steps for forming, operating, and maintaining community advisory boards will also be presented based on best practices (Newman et al., 2011), and panelists’ own experiences. Finally, stuck points and lessons learned will be discussed, including: aligning expectations between community and academic partners; navigating the tension between community priorities and what is possible with current resources (e.g., budget, time); ways to share power and decision-making with community partners; and strategies for building trust.