Project Summary
In partnership with our community stakeholders, we have identified two main problems in community-engaged research at Boston Medical Center: lack of an ample pool of community members representative of our diverse community to engage in the research process and/or prepared to serve as advocates, and a lack of sustainable community-based communication platforms for distributing research information to our diverse urban community. The Connecting Community to Research Program will adopt and implement an evidence-based, community-based training program as a solution. The proposed training program aims to increase the number and diversity of community members who are informed, ready and willing to engage in the research process, and provide a platform for us to share information with the community about their impact on research. Six training sessions will be held targeting different communities and evaluation data collected from trainees our community stakeholders will be used to produce an on-line Toolkit.
The projected outputs from this project are an evidence- and community-based training program targeting diverse, lay community members for engagement in research; and development of a toolkit.
Project collaborators include community advocates; a Community Advisory Group; Health Care for All; Health Resources in Action; University of Massachusetts Center for Clinical and Translational Science; Tufts University Clinical and Translational Institute; Center for Community Health Education; Research and Service (CCHERS); Boston HealthNet; Boston Public Health Commission; and The Partnership in Health and Housing (PHH) Community Committee.