Community Engagement - HEALS - Institute for Climate Change, Environmental Health, and Exposomics

The Community Engagement Core (CEC) serves as the translational hub of the Institute, bringing complex exposomic research findings to the clinic, communities, and decisionmakers, transforming practices and policies that protect public health.

The CEC:

Prioritizes and fosters research that is driven by community needs.
Supports bidirectional communication by partnering diverse and disadvantaged communities with Institute scientists.
Translates Institute research findings for communities and decisionmakers to promote evidence-based practices and policies that improve health outcomes.
Maintains an active and integrated Stakeholder Advisory Board (link out to SAB members page)
Provides evidence-based guidance to state and local decision makers to promote the adoption of safer policies

There are several levels of community involvement in research. The CEC can provide researchers with guidance on the most appropriate strategy of community engagement for their research aims including:

Investigator-Driven Research: Research is started, developed, and conducted by investigators.
Community Placed/Based Research: The community is viewed as the location of research.
Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR): Collaborative, equitable partnerships between academics and communities. Research questions are started by the community.
Community-Driven Research: The community carries out its own research without necessarily an outside research partner.
Community-Engaged Research: Communities are engaged to some degree in some aspects of the research process.

If proposing a CBPR project, this checklist is a helpful rubric to ensure your proposal meets the criteria for true CBPR research. If it does not, please refer to the spectrum and definitions above to best label your proposed project.