Listening to Community Partners: Successes and Challenges in Fostering Authentic, Effective, and Trusting Partnerships in the RADx-UP Program

Engaging community partners helps public health researchers to (1) identify meaningful questions based on their authentic knowledge and lived experience, (2) develop protocols responsive to community needs, (3) ensure that interventions are culturally and contextually relevant, and (4) disseminate findings accessible for communities.1-3 The Rapid Acceleration of DiagnosticsUnderserved Populations (RADx-UP) program, created by the National Institutes of Health, is a consortium of more than 125 research projects aiming to understand and reduce COVID-19 disparities in morbidity and mortality through community-engaged research partnerships. The CEC also is critical to meeting communities' social needs in the midst of the pandemic, including building social networks, promoting trust in academic partners, and fostering mutual respect. LISTENING SESSION Attendees consisted of an executive director of a health coalition in Garden City, Kansas (CP1);a founder and director of a Christian faith community-based organization in Shubuta, Mississippi (CP2);a community partner working with a RADx-UP study aiming to understand the effects of COVID-19 and violence within African American communities in Chicago, Illinois (CP3);and a chief executive officer of a minority health institute in Jackson, Mississippi (CP4). Whereas we were sending people to community health center health care providers, we now have self-tests, and organizations are also making it more convenient for the community to have access to testing.

School-Academic Partnerships in Support of Safe Return to Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Safely returning underserved youth to school during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic through diagnostic testing and health education is imperative to mitigate the ongoing negative impact of COVID-19 and reduce health inequalities in underserved communities. The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations program is a consortium of research projects across the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health to understand the factors associated with the disproportionate burden of the pandemic among underserved populations and to leverage mitigation strategies, including diagnostic testing, with a focus on reducing health disparities. In this article, we provide an overview and introduce the articles from 8 Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations projects featured in the supplement "Navigating a Pandemic in the K-12 Setting: Keeping Our School Communities Safe" published in Pediatrics. These projects funded in the program's first phase focus on COVID-19 diagnostic testing approaches for youth and employees at schools in underserved communities to support safe in-person learning. In the articles comprising the supplement, researchers present barriers and facilitators of the community engagement process necessary to establish school-academic partnerships. These efforts showcase school-based implementation testing strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic but are translatable to tackling other challenges related to reducing health disparities.