Amplifying the Community Voice in Community–Academic Partnerships: A Summary of and Commentary on a Thematic Issue

This special issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP), “Maximizing Community Contributions, Benefits, and Outcomes in Clinical and Translational Research,” seeks to advance the field of community-based health research by providing information, tools, and understanding of the accomplishments, best practices, and challenges that community and academic partners have experienced in their engagement with National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical and Translational Science Awardees (CTSAs) and other research entities.* Much of the editorial work has been performed by guest editors: a collaboration of academics and community-based partners who strived to publish papers that amplify community perspectives in clinical and translational research, including those involving participatory approaches with a wide range of communities, participants, settings, and geographic locations.

The resulting special issue includes papers that cover a wide range of multidisciplinary topics that reflect collaborations across many diverse communities, CTSAs, and community-engaged practice-based research networks. Authored and co-authored by community partners, the papers often reflect the perspectives, experiences, contributions, and value that community partnerships add to the research enterprise. This issue advances novel ideas, evaluates the implementation and development of community– academic partnerships, and highlights best practices. The focus is on lessons learned from community engagement in health research that will strengthen the research enterprise while building community and academic capacity to engage effectively for the improvement of public health in our communities.

The papers in this issue highlight the important concept of community-based participatory research (CBPR), which has varied definitions. CBPR is, however, generally used to describe qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research that is designed, planned, and conducted by and in collaboration with institution-based researchers and “community-based entities,” such as members of community-based organizations, public interest groups, and/or other associations. Investigations are on a topic or area of need identified by members of the community or by the researchers.^1–4 CBPR is also considered to be an approach to research that aims to use and develop knowledge, products, and outcomes that are mutually beneficial to researchers and community members.

This issue features eleven papers in five categories: Community Perspective, Original Research, Theory and Methods, Work-in-Progress & Lessons Learned, and Policy and Practice. In response to a national solicitation, 27 manuscripts were received. The guest editors sent the articles out for review to both community and academic reviewers. One guest editor was assigned to each manuscript and led a teleconference discussion of the manuscript with the rest of the guest editors and then worked with PCHP’s editor to give feedback to authors, almost always seeking to highlight the community’s perspective on the collaboration. Ultimately, nine manuscripts were rejected, seven were judged as less in concert with the goals of the special issue and were accepted with revision for a regular issue of PCHP, five were accepted for the special issue with minor revisions, and six were accepted for the special issue with major revisions. Among all the submissions, there were 42 community authors, three of whom were the lead author; three quarters (74%) of the manuscripts had at least one community author. Readers of this volume will gain insights and knowledge in developing sustainable, collaborative community–academic research partnerships. The papers offer measures of success through community asset building and highlight the diversity of CBPR as well as evaluation methods for various settings and frameworks.

Acknowledging that CBPR can generate products as diverse as videos, curricula, digital stories and toolkits, PCHP collaborated with the CES4Health.info⁵ to invite submissions of both manuscripts and products. The products that were peer reviewed and published by CES4Health can be accessed at http://CES4Health.info

Our authors all highlight critical issues and dynamics of partnership development and focus on applying innovative and creative approaches to improve community engagement and participation in health research. Mason et al. detail community perspectives on CBPR capacity building, in “I Know What CBPR Is, Now What Do I Do?” They explore the context of community engagement within the...