Faculty beliefs, perceptions, and level of community involvement in their research: a survey at one urban academic institution.

Health researchers are increasingly interested in how best to engage communities in their health-related research studies. To help determine how researchers have interacted with community members in their research, we conducted a survey of full-time faculty from the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions regarding researchers' beliefs and experiences with community-based research. Approximately 41% of respondents who conducted human subject studies had enrolled local residents in their research. Researchers whose studies were based in the surrounding community were significantly more likely to involve community members in all stages of their research (e.g., selection of the problem, project planning, data collection, interpretation and dissemination of results, or developing an intervention) than were faculty whose studies enrolled community members as research participants but whose studies were not set in the community. Over 90% of all faculty respondents agree that community involvement improves the relevance of their research, although almost 60% had not done so. Most faculty value community involvement, but they want more institutional support for such activities and they seek better skills to involve community. Few studies have surveyed researchers who enroll community members as research participants to document practices regarding community involvement in the research process. Given that the majority (73.6%) of faculty responded that they intend to include local residents in their upcoming studies, future research to evaluate interventions designed to facilitate community involvement, especially in the inner city, would help stakeholders identify best practices for involving and engaging communities in health research.

Faculty perspectives on community-based research: "I see this still as a journey".

ACADEMIC FACULTY MEMBERS ARE increasingly following community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles. We conducted qualitative, in-depth interviews with 22 Johns Hopkins faculty members who conduct community-based research to understand their experiences and perspectives. Respondents engaged the community in numerous ways, ranging from working with community advisory boards to hiring community members as project staff to collaborating with community members across all phases of research. Challenges included defining "community," ensuring adequate community representation, sharing power with community partners, overcoming an institutional history of strained community-academic relationships, and working within existing academic incentive structures. Despite these challenges, respondents generally felt their experiences conducting research with community participation were positive and successful. Policy changes at funding and academic institutions and an emphasis on the similarities between CBPR and ethical principles could improve support for CBPR approaches.

"You've got to understand community": community perceptions on "breaking the disconnect" between researchers and communities.

BACKGROUND: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a growing approach to research yet its implementation does not come without challenges. Incorporating CBPR may be especially difficult for large academic medical institutions where research is conducted by different stakeholders operating under different paradigms. The Environmental Justice Partnership (EJP) is a community-academic partnership that sought to understand and address these challenges. OBJECTIVES: To know how to effectively foster collaboration between a large academic medical center and its surrounding urban community, the EJP sought to understand community stakeholders' views on research, the research process, and how to improve researcher-community collaborations. METHODS: This study used a qualitative approach to gather information from residents and representatives from community-based organizations (CBOs) and city agencies. The data are from 17 semistructured interviews and 8 focus groups (n = 80) conducted from October 2003 to May 2004. RESULTS: Respondents emphasized the importance of disseminating research findings, working closely with the community before research starts and throughout the study, and listening to community members' priorities and needs. Those with personal research experience had more positive attitudes about research than respondents who had not been in research. CONCLUSIONS: Academic institutions need to make greater effort to involve communities regularly in their community-based research to identify community priorities and concerns. Institutions may want to develop strategies for their affiliated researchers to facilitate partnership building. Especially for large academic institutions in urban settings, such efforts may help to bridge distance between researchers and community to promote the shared goal of improved public health.