Promising Practices for Community-Engaged Research Introduction

Goal 

The goal of this curriculum is to demonstrate how public health researchers can engage in sustainable community-engaged research by sharing the lessons learned and resources used and developed over the course of the 10-year IRL program. 

Intended Audience 

This curriculum is a resource for people (faculty, students, community leaders, community organizers, researchers, etc.) who are committed to equity-centered, community-engaged research and who want to teach and learn about building and leading movements to create change that will promote health equity and social justice through effective and ethical research-community partnerships.  

Course Description 

This curriculum is a gift. It represents the collective wisdom, hard-won lessons, and enduring relationships cultivated over ten years of the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program—a national leadership program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

We begin with a fundamental assumption: impactful and sustainable health equity research must be community-led. It must center marginalized voices not as subjects to be studied, but as visionaries to be followed. It must be inherently relational, recognizing that building trust is not a step in the research process—it is the process. It must decenter problems and prioritize possibilities, shifting from deficit-based framing to asset-based dreaming. And it requires everyone involved to engage in a personal practice of self-reflection, collective care, and ongoing accountability to communities.

Curriculum Objectives

The resources compiled here are designed to demonstrate how to: 

1. Center community voice in research by designing from the edges and inviting those most impacted to lead visioning and decision-making 
2. Elevate community voice through storytelling, narrative change, and ethical knowledge-sharing practices 
3. Identify issues of interest to the community by listening deeply and responding to community-defined priorities 
4. Generate solutions rooted in community experience by honoring cultural practices, ancestral wisdom, and lived experience as legitimate forms of evidence 
5. Sustain community involvement in research by building relationships and prioritizing reciprocity over extraction 

Council on Education in Public Health (CEPH) Criteria 

The resources compiled here can be incorporated into public health coursework that is aligned with the following CEPH Foundational Competencies:

Leadership 

#16 – Apply principles of leadership and/or management to address a relevant issue 

#17 – Apply negotiation and mediation skills to address organizational or community challenges 

Communication 

#18 – Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors 

#19 – Communicate audience-appropriate public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation, to a non-academic, non-peer audience with attention to factors such as literacy and health literacy 

#20 – Describe the importance of cultural humility in communicating public health content 

Interprofessional and/or Intersectoral Practice 

#21 – Integrate perspectives from other sectors and/or professions to promote and advance population health 

Systems Thinking 

#22 – Apply a systems thinking tool to visually represent a public health issue in a format other than standard narrative 

Modules

Objectives

1, 5

CEPH Competencies

16, 17, 20, 22

Objectives

1, 2, 5

CEPH Competencies

17, 20, 21, 22

Objectives

2, 4

CEPH Competencies

18, 20, 21, 22

Objectives

2, 4

CEPH Competencies

18, 20, 21, 22

Objectives

1, 2, 3, 4

CEPH Competencies

18, 19, 20

Objectives

3, 5

CEPH Competencies

16, 17, 21, 22