Community Engagement

The Community Engagement (CE) Program is located in the OSU College of Public Health, and is part of the OSU Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS).

The infrastructure we are building through the CCTS for community engagement in research includes two primary components: 1) practice-based research network; and 2) community-based research network. OSU has an established Primary Care Practice-based Research Network (PC PBRN). The CE Program promotes the PC PBRN as a resource for research ideas, participant recruitment, and dissemination. We are also developing a Community-based Research Network (CBRN) that will make it easier for researchers to engage with diverse community partners in the research process.

The CE Program at OSU started in summer, 2008. Specific activities planned for the first year include:

Competitive pilot grants for community-engagement in research.
Community research capacity building with existing community-based networks affiliated with OSU.
Experiential opportunities for secondary students to learn about clinical and translational research.
Education for researchers about “community engagement in research” through seminars and website.

The leadership for the CE Program includes:

Director: Mary Ellen Wewers, PhD, MPH, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, College of Public Health
Co-director: Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH, Director, Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice and Vice President for Health Services Research, Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Associate directors: Larry Gabel, PhD, Vice Chair, Family Medicine & Electra Paskett, PhD, Professor, College of Public Health

For more information, contact Nancy Hood, MPH, the CE Program Manager, nhood@cph.osu.edu, 614-688-3478.

What is Community Engagement in Research?

Federal health agencies (e.g., CDC, NIH, AHRQ) are increasingly recognizing, supporting, and in many cases requiring “community engagement” in health-related research. Evidence shows that community involvement can increase the relevance and quality of health research, even in clinical studies.

Challenges exist, however, in defining what “community engagement” actually means for research practice. It is often easier to give examples of community engagement in research than to define it. Here are a few examples:

A cancer survivor participates in a university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to provide a community perspective when research applications are reviewed.
A university-based researcher partners with clinicians in community-based behavioral health clinics to implement a mental health intervention shown to be effective in more controlled settings.
A university-based researcher partners with the medical director of a health system in Appalachia Ohio to determine whether a brief intervention to help patients stop smoking is possible in that setting.
A community-based education program asks health researchers to help them evaluate the impact of a diabetes self-management program.

There are different “levels” of community participation in research. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is on one end of the “engagement” spectrum (Israel et al., 2005). This end of the spectrum is described as equal participation by community partners and researchers throughout the research process.

On the other end of the spectrum, communities are simply informed about what research is occurring, and what the results were. In the middle of the spectrum, communities are engaged in important but limited aspect of research studies, such as recruiting and retaining research participants. It is important to recognize that more participation is not always better; some community partners may not have the time, interest, or expertise to participate as equal partners in every stage of the research process (Green, 2003).

The CE Program defines “community” broadly to include community residents, community-based organizations, public health agencies, social service providers, healthcare providers, healthcare payers, or elected officials. Communities can further be defined based on age, geography, race, ethnicity, disease, gender, sexual orientation, or other defining characteristics. Community partners or representatives may be involved in any or all steps in the research process, including but not limited to:

identifying health concerns
prioritizing research questions
designing a study
recruiting and retaining study participants
designing data collection instruments and protocols
collecting data
designing and implementing interventions
analyzing data
interpreting findings
disseminating findings
translating findings into practice

For more information, contact Nancy Hood, MPH, the CE Program Manager, nhood@cph.osu.edu, 614-688-3478.

Community Engagement at OSU

Existing outreach and engagement resources at OSU

The Ohio State University (OSU) has numerous existing resources for community engagement and outreach – in fact, OSU received a new classification in 2008 called “Curricular Engagement and Outreach & Partnerships” from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Many of these resources are well-kept secrets for investigators doing health-related research. For more information about these resources, please click on the links below or e-mail ccts-community@osumc.edu.

OSU Primary Care Practice-based Research Network (OSU-PCPBRN)

View Description

Practice-based Research Network
As a research program of the Primary Care Research Institute (PCRI), the Ohio State University Primary Care Practice-Based Research Network (OSU-PCPBRN) includes 25 primary care sites serving diverse patient populations throughout Central Ohio. It includes seven family medicine clinics of the Ohio State University Primary Care Network, three general internal medicine clinics of the Ohio State University Specialty Care Network, five Columbus Neighborhood Health Center clinics; ten Nationwide Children’s Hospital Pediatric Primary Care Centers. PCRI members can access demographic and diagnosis data about patient populations served at each of these sites. An investigator agreement and review committee ensure that all research activities are coordinated and manageable for each site. The OSU-PCPBRN is an excellent resource for any investigator interested in recruiting patients or conducting studies in community-based primary care (adult and pediatric) settings.

OSU Extension

View Description

OSU Extenstion
OSU Extension has community-based educators covering every county in Ohio. Educators partner with individuals, families, communities, business and industry, and organizations to improve the lives and communities of Ohioans through research-based education programs. Extension education programs have a particular emphasis on nutrition, diabetes, obesity. In combination with the Office of Outreach and Engagement, Extension created OSU CARES, a program to activate teams of university professionals to address anticipated critical issues to face Ohioans. OSU CARES provides a guide for finding colleagues with similar outreach/engagement interests and supports interdisciplinary outreach teams through grants and professional development opportunities.

OSU College of Pharmacy

View Description

OSU COP
The College of Pharmacy Division of Pharmacy Practice and Administration has developed many community partnerships for service, education, training, and research. Multiple community-based pharmacies are sites for faculty service and residency training, such as the Kroger Patient Care Center, the Clinical Partners Program, and Columbus Neighborhood Health Centers. These sites provide services to patients in the areas of chronic disease treatment and prevention, health and medication access, lifestyle and wellness, and optimization of medication therapies. The division has also integrated a practice-based research training network into its 1-year, post-graduate residency program. Other examples of community partnerships include those developed through the experiential program, which engages various community pharmacy partners with student rotations. For example, the Partner for Promotion program links community-based pharmacists, pharmacy students, and Extension educators to develop and provide innovative patient-care programs. Community partnerships developed and maintained by Pharmacy Practice offer numerous opportunities for recruiting research participants, conducting research in community-based settings, training students in research, and translating research findings into practice.

OSU Outreach and Engagement Office

View Description

Outreach and Engagement
The OSU Outreach and Engagement Office defines “outreach and engagement” as meaningful and mutually beneficial collaborations with partners outside the academic community for teaching, research, and service. The office provides numerous resources that researchers may find useful, including professional development workshops, information and tools to support engagement, and grants for outreach and service-learning projects. Through Project GRO, they also work to enhance the integration of outreach and engagement activities into NSF research grant proposals.

P12 Project

View Description

P12 Project
The P12 Project works to help improve Ohio’s schools, especially those districts with students from lower socioeconomic families. They stimulate partnerships between schools and the university by providing partnership resources, a partnership model, and tools for identifying existing partnerships with schools. For example, they have a listing of all youth programs and camps located on OSU campus. The P12 Project is an excellent resource for investigators interested in working with secondary schools, teachers, or OSU students preparing to be teachers.

OSU researchers conducting community engaged research

Many OSU investigators already conduct research in and with communities. Investigators doing community-engaged research will be profiled here to facilitate networking and collaboration.

Assessment of community engagement in research

The CE Program is conducting an assessment to identify ways that communities are currently engaged in health-related clinical and translational research at OSU. The assessment includes two components:

A brief, on-line survey that will be e-mailed to principal investigators with NIH-funded studies active in the past five years.
Case studies of eight research projects illustrating different ways communities can be engaged in research. Projects will be identified through the on-line survey, an OSUToday announcement, and word of mouth. To recommend a project, please e-mail Nancy Hood, nhood@cph.osu.edu.

Please check back for assessment results in Spring 2009!

Useful Links

Do you need training or tools for conducting community-engaged research? There are many high-quality, user-friendly resources for researchers and community partners interested in this type of research. Browse the links below for training, education and advocacy organizations, community assessment tools, and evidence-based interventions.

Training in Community-engaged Research

A Skill-Building Curriculum for Community-based Participatory Research Partnerships

View Description

CBPR Curriculum
This on-line curriculum was developed by The Examining Community-Institutional Partnerships for Prevention Research Group in 2006. The curriculum includes many examples, exercises, and samples. It can be used to help develop research partnerships, conduct trainings for researchers or community partners, or for self-study.

Research Ethics Training Curriculum for Community Representatives

View Description

FHI Research Ethics Training Curriculum
Developed by Family Health International, this training was designed to educate community representatives about their roles and responsibilities in research projects so they have a stronger voice before, during, and after the research process. There is a self-study version and a “presenter” version of the training, including case studies and evaluation forms.

Education and Advocacy for Engaging Communities in Research

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health

View Description

CCPH
This national, non-profit organization has been promoting health by encouraging and supporting partnerships between communities and higher educational institutions since 1996. The website includes a large section of resources for community-based participatory research. They also have resources to help universities create infrastructure, systems, and policies to support community-engaged research.

Education Network to Advance Cancer Clinical Trials (ENACCT)

View Description

ENACCT
The mission of this non-profit organization founded in 2004 is to identify, implement, and validate innovative community-centered approaches to cancer clinical trials education. They developed and pilot tested training materials about the importance of diverse patient populations in clinical trials and strategies for achieving access to cancer clinical trials. These training modules are available on their website and are tailored for clinical trials teams, primary health care providers, and community leaders. You can also download a comprehensive report called Communities as Partners in Cancer Clinical Trials: Changing Research, Practice, and Policy that includes resources and implications that reach beyond cancer research.

Community Assessment

Appalachian Rural Health Institute

View Description

Appalachian Rural Health Institute
The Appalachian Rural Health Institute (ARHI) is an interdisciplinary health services and research institute at Ohio University. ARHI’s mission is to bring together researchers, community members, and healthcare professionals with common interests to address rural health issues in Appalachia. AHRI has a Diabetes Center that includes community education, a biorepository, a community coalition, and biomedical research projects. AHRI has also conducted several recent community health assessments in Appalachian Ohio counties using telephone surveys and focus groups. County-level data are available for diabetes, smoking, chronic disease, obesity, and other health issues.

Central Ohio Data Access Tools

View Description

CODAT
Developed by Community Research Partners, a nonprofit research center, this website offers three different tools: DataSource, Community Indicators, and a Research Clearinghouse. DataSource offers interactive tools to display and analyze demographic, social services, education, and property data for available geographies within Franklin County. Community indicators are ready-made charts and statistics displaying key population data about populations, education, employment, health, etc., in central Ohio. The Research Clearinghouse offers downloadable plans, needs assessments, and research reports from many central Ohio organizations and populations about a variety of health-related topics.

The Community Toolbox

View Description

Community Toolbox
The Community Toolbox (CTB) is a free resource for information on essential skills for building healthy communities. Resources help users build specific skills in community work, along with offering guidance for key tasks, a troubleshooting guide of common dilemmas in this kind of work, guides for implementing best practices and links to best practice databases, and an “ask an advisor” feature for connecting with others. Educational modules for each of CTB’s sixteen core competencies are also available for purchase.

Health Landscape

View Description

Health Landscape
This user-friendly, interactive website was developed and supported by the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Community HealthView allows users to create custom maps and tables of health in their communities - depicting populations at risk, health outcomes, and the distribution of health interventions. Data available for mapping include Ohio Family Health Survey, U.S. Census, health insurance coverage and expenditures, socioeconomic measures, etc. The Primary Care Atlas maps Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), Medicare Physician Scarcity Areas (PSAs), the distribution of physicians by specialty (primary care and other), and populations. There is also a fee-based option to upload and geocode your own data.

OASIS (Online Analysis and Statistical Information System)

View Description

OASIS
Funded by The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, OASIS is an online analysis and statistical information system. Registration is free, and users are given access to public-release health and social science data for download or on-line statistical analysis. Analysis options are provided for experienced as well as novice statistical users. Ohio datasets available in OASIS include the Ohio Family Health Survey, the Ohio Health Issues Poll, and the Ohio Poll. There are also a variety of rich datasets from the Cincinnati area and southwest Ohio.

Ohio Family Health Survey

View Description

Ohio Family Health Survey
The Ohio Family Health Survey is the largest state-sponsored health survey in the U.S. There were 19,000 respondents in 1998, 39,000 respondents in 2004, and 51,000 in 2008. Survey questions cover health status, health care access and utilization, satisfaction, insurance status, and demographics. Research briefs and reports are available from the website in addition to downloadable public use datasets. Researchers can request access to restricted-access research data sets.

Evidence-based Interventions

Guide to Community Preventive Services

View Description

Guide to Community Preventive Services
The Community Guide summarizes what is known about the effectiveness, economic efficiency, and feasibility of interventions to promote community health and prevent disease. Recommended interventions have been made for 17 topics such as obesity, tobacco, asthma, physical activity, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and mental health. Development of the Guide is overseen by an independent, non-governmental, volunteer body of public health and prevention experts, whose members are appointed by the Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Guide also provides a research agenda on each topic being studied to help in planning and conducting research and in generating proposals for additional funds.

Guide to Clinical Preventive Services

View Description

Guide to Clinical Preventive Services
This Guide contains the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on the use of screening, counseling, and other preventive services that are typically delivered in primary care settings. The USPSTF, an independent panel of experts supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), makes recommendations based on systematic reviews of the evidence related to the benefits and potential harms of clinical preventive services. A pocket guide and electronic preventive services selector are available for download from this website.

Apply for Access to CCTS Resources

Attention researchers who are interested in applying for CCTS Resources:

The CCTS Research Resources Request Form is a universal form that provides a place for researchers who need some assistance from the resources that the CCTS has to offer in order to accomplish a research project. To apply for assistance with the planning, execution, and/or publication of a research project, please use the CCTS Research Resources Request Form to request assistance.

Community Update

Summer Research Experience Program a Success

This summer, the Ohio State University Center for Clinical and Translational Science (OSU CCTS) is hosting a group of 14 high school students and two teachers with its new Summer Research Experience Program (SREP). The SREP, which targets students who are traditionally underrepresented in scientific research, has paired each participant with a principal investigator who is conducting NIH-funded clinical and translational research at OSU.

RFA: TL1 Applications

The OSU Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) is seeking applicants for the NIH CTSA TL1 Mentored Clinical Research Training Program. The overall goal of the CCTS TL1 Program is to provide Trainees with the skills required to develop a career in trans-disciplinary clinical and translational research relevant to human health.

Attend the TL1 Mentored Clinical Research Program Information Session

Get more information on how to apply and download an application

OSU Research Events

Nov 24 2009 - 11:00am — Public Round-Table Discussion: "What Should NASA's Research Priorities Be for Biological and Physical Sciences in Space?"

Nov 25 2009 - 12:00pm — OSUCCC Radiation Oncology Seminar Series: "Future Directions in Breast Radiation Oncology"

Nov 30 2009 - 11:30am — College of Nursing Research Colloquia: "Social Influences on Health"

Dec 1 2009 - 12:00pm — Nationwide Children's Hospital Clinical Research Seminar "Scientific Misconduct"