Background: Disparities in the social determinants of health and deeply rooted mistrust due to historical research atrocities are very prevalent in West Baltimore communities, particularly among African Americans. The PATIENTS program at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) seeks to repair that broken trust by meeting people “where they are”; the program actively engages communities and encourages community members to participate in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). In collaboration with the Southwest Partnership (SWP), the PATIENTS program seeks to expand its PCOR/CER footprint to the Southwest Baltimore community.

Proposed Solution: The proposed solution is to develop a community-academic partnership for building PCOR/CER capacity. SWP and UMB will serve as foundational partners on this project to open a bridge between this community and researchers, healthcare providers, and more.

Objectives: The overall objective is to foster a multi-stakeholder collaboration focused on PCOR/CER by leveraging the Southwest Partnership’s standing in the community to develop a sustainable partnership with the community to engage in the research process from topic selection through dissemination of results.

Activities: The project team plans to convene researchers from the PATIENTS program’s network and community members from the SWP’s network to facilitate bidirectional learning and shared goals for future PCOR/CER.

To do so, the team will:

• Form a six-member stakeholder advisory board (SAB)
• Co-develop materials for PCOR/CER training
• Co-deliver training to SWP community members and researchers
• Evaluate the training to identify areas of improvement for future training
• Engage community members who have completed the training around broader opportunities in PCOR/CER
• Document and disseminate lessons learned

Outcomes and Outputs (projected): To foster a multi-stakeholder collaboration focused on PCOR/CER by leveraging the network and resources from the Southwest Partnership to develop a sustainable partnership with traditionally underrepresented communities.

Short term: Build a diverse SAB and co-develop the training sessions. Through repeated engagement between SWP and the PATIENTS program, the team intends to build trust between the two organizations, and by extension, the greater Southwest Baltimore community. 

Long term: Disseminating the results of this project to SWP’s community, academic audiences, and broader audiences to share the lessons learned from the collaboration. Additionally, a long-term output is to increase SWP community members’ involvement as leaders in PCOR/CER.

Patient and Stakeholder Engagement Plan: Engagement of SWP community members includes three phases, the first being planning. With the help of the SAB, SWP, and its community members, the PATIENTS program will co-develop an interactive PCOR/CER-focused training. The second phase is doing. The PATIENTS program and SWP will coordinate and implement up to five trainings. And lastly, the third phase is delivering. The PATIENTS program and SWP will co-disseminate findings via multimedia outlets and identify future opportunities in PCOR/CER for SWP’s community members.

Project Collaborators: Southwest Partnership (SWP), Baltimore, Maryland.