Wednesday, May 8, 2024
5/8/2024
Project Summary Community engaged research (CER) is a historically underutilized approach in behavioral and social science research (BSSR). Further, when utilized by BSSR researchers, CER has traditionally been conducted in a top- down approach, with researchers designing studies and collecting data without input or consent from the communities involved in their studies. This top-down approach has been criticized for being paternalistic, and for not meaningfully including the perspectives, lived experience, and expertise of community members. Moreover, BSSR has often been used to justify policies and programs that have had negative consequences for communities, especially for those who are marginalized. This has led to a mistrust of behavioral and social science research within marginalized communities. However, there is a growing movement in BSSR to adopt CER approaches. These approaches involve working directly with communities to identify research questions, collect data, and interpret results. It also involves sharing research findings with communities and using them to develop programs and policies that benefit communities. By engaging with communities, researchers can improve the quality of their research, increase the impact of their research, and build trusting relationships between researchers and communities. While institutions may now be adapting their curricula to include topics such as community engagement, health equity, and related methodologies, this subject area is not universal across BSSR education. Thus, there is ample opportunity for research education programs, such as short courses, to create shared community learning spaces for reflection, mentorship, and practice between BSSR scholars, students and health practitioners. In response to “Short Courses on Innovative Methodologies and Approaches in the Behavioral and Social Sciences” (RFA-OD-23-003), we propose “Community Engagement: A Short Course to Optimize Research Endeavors” (CE-SCORE). This short course will utilize the principles of critical adult education (CEA), a form of adult education that aims to empower learners to critically analyze the world around them and take action to transform it. CEA asks learners to consider power relations and ideologies, such as those between scientist and citizen, in order to allow the learner to reflect on their current and future research practices. In this way, CEA and CER are aligned in their concern with community empowerment, social justice, and social change to create a more just and equitable world. CE-SCORE promises to empower students to critically engage with CER principles, and learn to apply them in real-world settings that are relevant to students’ community contexts. The teaching methodologies and course curriculum will empower emerging and current public health scholars, students, and practitioners to reflect on their current practice, and learn to enact CER values, in order to transform the world around them through research.
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