Community-Engaged Bidirectional Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication With Immigrant and Refugee Populations During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives: This study was conducted to assess an intervention that was created by a community–academic partnership to address COVID-19 health inequities. We evaluated a community-engaged bidirectional pandemic crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) framework with immigrant and refugee populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A 17-year community-engaged research partnership adopted a CERC framework in March 2020 to address COVID-19 prevention, testing, and socioeconomic impacts with immigrant and refugee groups in southeast Minnesota. The partnership used bidirectional communication between communication leaders and their social networks to refine messages, leverage resources, and advise policy makers. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation for intervention acceptability, feasibility, reach, adaptation, and sustainability through multisource data, including email communications, work group notes, semistructured interviews, and focus groups. Results: The intervention reached at least 39 000 people in 9 months. It was implemented as intended and perceived efficacy was high. Frequent communication between community and academic partners allowed the team to respond rapidly to concerns and facilitated connection of community members to resources. Framework implementation also led to systems and policy changes to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee populations. Conclusions: Community-engaged CERC is feasible and sustainable and can reduce COVID-19 disparities through shared creation and dissemination of public health messages, enhanced connection to existing resources, and incorporation of community perspectives in regional pandemic mitigation policies.

Connecting Implementation Science, Community-Engaged Research, and Health Promotion to Address Cancer Inequities in Massachusetts: The UMB/DF-HCC U54 Outreach Core

The Outreach Core of the U54 Partnership between the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the University of Massachusetts Boston created a new model for addressing cancer inequities that integrates implementation science, community-engaged research, and health promotion. Key elements of the approach include engaging a Community Advisory Board, supporting students from underrepresented minority backgrounds to conduct health promotion and community-engaged research, increasing the delivery of evidence-based cancer prevention programs to underserved communities (directly and by training local organizations), supporting research-practice partnerships, and disseminating findings. Our model highlights the need for long-term investments to connect underserved communities with evidence-based cancer prevention.

Decolonial Dreamers and Dead Elephants

The 11 articles in this special themed issue examine the complexity of issues of power between individual researchers, between researchers and community organisations or higher education institutions, and between community organisations and institutions in relation to community-engaged research and scholarship. The articles uplift the pain and joy in community-engaged research, the harm and the benefits, the contradictions and tensions, and the true gifts and understanding gained in research with communities for the purpose of co-creating transformational change. We weave our own knowledge and experiences together with these individual articles as we seek ways to reimagine the future of community research and engagement. Specifically, we connect the near obliteration of African elephants and loss of Indigneous ways of knowing in Africa with the diverse communities, contexts and issues of power in community-engaged scholarship represented in this special volume. We, like the authors, hold a dream for the future of engaged scholarship that is more equitable, inclusive and morally just. We believe this dream is not only possible but achievable, as evidenced by the work of the authors in this volume. We present an African indigenous knowledge system, Ubuntu, whose principles, values and tenets simultaneously promote the conservation of the community as a whole and the harmonious existence of the individual within the community. We posit that the adaptation and adoption of this knowledge system within the scholarship and practice of community-university partnerships and community research relationships may enable the development of a mutuality and reciprocity that levels power hierarchies within the personal, organisational and societal arenas of community-university partnerships. We demonstrate that many of the cases described by contributors to this special volume resonate with this knowledge system, which itself has survived colonisation and its concomitant epistemicide. Together, the authors help paint a pathway for those who want to become decolonial dreamers (la paperson 2017) daring to reimagine the nature of power in research as we collectively find ways to dream bigger in order to uncover new and exciting possibilities for this work we call community-engaged scholarship.

THE CABE PROJECT: Developing a model to conceptualise the sexual attitudes, behaviours, and experiences of men who have sex with men and Waria in Bali, Indonesia: Protocol for a mixed-methods design within a community-engaged research study

Introduction The prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among MSM (men who have sex with men) and transgender women (waria) in Bali is of significant public health concern. According to the 2015 Integrated Biological and Behavioural Survey (IBBS), HIV prevalence among MSM in Denpasar (the capital city of Bali) was 36% – the highest prevalence in this population reported nationally. In addition, 26% of MSM and 25% of waria in Indonesia were living with HIV in 2015. There is limited research examining the attitudes, behaviours and experiences of MSM in Indonesia, and specifically in Bali. This study will develop a model to help understand the social-cultural context, attitudes, behaviours, and experiences to inform interventions to increase safe sex practices amongst Indonesian MSM and waria who live in Bali. Methods and analysis The community-engaged research (CEnR) study, employing a sequential mixed-methods approach, will engage MSM and waria community throughout all five phases. The first two phases will include partnership building and exploratory research (focus group discussions/FGDs). Phase three will include the administration of a survey ( n = 374 Indonesian MSM and waria). Phases four and five include explanatory (in-depth interviews) and dissemination phases, respectively. Multivariate analysis will be employed for the quantitative data (the survey) and thematic analysis will be used to analyse the qualitative data (FGDs and in-depth interviews). Discussion The findings of this CEnR will inform culturally congruent interventions for organisation working with MSM and transgender to promote safer sexual health practice and improve general well-being of this community.

Community-Engaged Research With Indigenous Communities to Improve Elder Health and Well-Being

Much of the past research conducted with tribal communities was coined "helicopter research," because researchers would enter the community, gather data, and leave the community, never to inform communities how the data was used or published, creating mistrust. Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a research approach conducted as an equal partnership between community members, organizational representatives, and researchers that serve as guidelines for researchers working collaboratively with communities. This symposium will offer a panel of presentations highlighting research studies with tribal communities that honor and respect tribal sovereignty in addressing health and wellbeing among their older adults. The panel presentations will consist of presentations on dementia caregiving, generativity and successful aging, social support and diabetes management, elder-centered research methods.

Teacher Exit Survey Development Through a Researcher–Practitioner Partnership: A Collaborative Approach

This article details the community-engaged research process employed by a researcher–practitioner partnership (RPP) to develop and pilot a common exit survey of teachers from participating school districts at the end of the 2018–2019 school year. This development occurred with input from school district representatives serving on a study team as well as through ongoing conversations with district human resource directors. There were three goals for this process: (1) to develop a common exit survey relevant to local needs with a strong conceptual framework, (2) to increase response rates and establish consistent administration practices in the region, and (3) to inform future data collection and analysis related to the broader RPP study on teacher retention. The resultant instrument articulated nine common categories of reasons for leaving based on analysis and adaptation of regional exit surveys: retirement, personal reasons, teacher preparation, compensation and benefits, career advancement/switch or higher education, community context, district context, school context, and testing and accountability context. Exit survey items are provided with reliability and validity information, and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Pilot implementation of psychoeducational workshops on behavior management and stress management for parents and teachers

The COVID-19 pandemic created compounding stressors for school-aged children, parents, and teachers and underscored the urgent need to widely implement evidence-based programs for promoting youth mental and behavioral health. In two community-engaged studies, we piloted psychoeducational workshops that taught behavior management and stress management strategies to parents and teachers. The research team partnered with a northern California school district to develop and implement these psychoeducational workshops. In study 1, parents (N = 165) participated in a series of workshops on behavior management. Parents perceived the strategies covered in each workshop to be acceptable, appropriate, and feasible and were able to accurately describe behavior management strategies following each workshop. In study 2, teachers (N = 113) participated in workshops on behavior management and stress management. Teachers perceived the strategies covered in each workshop to be acceptable, appropriate, and feasible and were able to accurately describe the strategies following each workshop. Findings suggest that psychoeducational workshops may be a promising avenue for promoting youth mental and behavioral health. Lessons learned from conducting this community-engaged research are discussed, as well as future directions for widely implementing psychoeducational workshops for parents and teachers.

Introduction

The Introduction opens with the stories of a Black parent and a Black student who were victims of the school-to-prison pipeline and their journeys to racial justice organizing. These experiences and these stories ground the emergence of the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. The Introduction then recounts the author’s own journey to awareness of the school-to-prison pipeline and describes the development of the community engaged research project upon which the book is based. It recounts the author’s traumatic experiences in the field witnessing the abusive treatment of students and parents of color, and it discusses the challenges faced addressing the author’s privileges and positionality as a white, male professor partnering with and studying organizers and leaders of color based in low-income communities. It ends with an overview of the book and its chapters.