Dear RADx-UP Partners:
Yesterday, the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) published a special supplement focused on RADx-UP and its prioritization of community-engaged research.
The supplement includes perspective pieces, editorials, and RADx-UP project summaries that emphasize the vital importance of community-engaged research. These articles demonstrate the mutual trust and tangible benefits that arise from authentic partnerships between community organizations and academic health researchers.
“At the heart of successful community-academic relationships lies the recognition that research is conducted with, not for, community members,” Guest Editor and Duke Assistant Professor Emily M. D’Agostino, DPH, MS, MEd, MA, emphasized. “These studies illuminate how community-engaged research partnerships leverage existing networks, trust, and credibility to enhance risk communication, respect, and sustained relationships, thereby improving access to testing and vaccination among vulnerable populations.”
This supplement underscores the vital role of mutual trust, explores community strengths, and advocates for reciprocal community-academic partnerships as fundamental to the RADx-UP program.
We invite you to check out the full AJPH supplement.
Its contents include:
EDITORIALS
- Prioritizing Community-Engaged Research: The Pathway for Combatting Health Inequities
Effective community-engaged research partnerships require acknowledging and shifting current power dynamics to foster open dialogue, trust, and authentic engagement in this work. This special issue celebrates successes from the RADx-UP project consortium, but also highlights the next steps for addressing challenges in fostering genuine partnerships that lead to change. - Lessons from COVID-19 Testing Research: The Power of Rapid Response
The knowledge gained, strategies developed, and community relationships formed during the RADx-UP Program can be used to address future communicable disease outbreaks in underserved communities throughout the U.S. RADx-UP’s expansive national footprint represents and exemplifies the impact that NIH and its research and community partners can have on the health of the nation.
- Paving the Way for the Next Frontier of Community-Engaged Research
By prioritizing active listening with community partners, fostering shared power dynamics, and embracing genuine collaboration, we can forge successful initiatives that address topics truly meaningful to communities and effectively reduce health inequities. - Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Approach and Safe Return to In-Person Learning for Diné Youth and Families
By leveraging Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research approaches and tailoring these strategies to the needs of specific communities, research and public health service programs may be more successful in addressing health inequities and enhancing public health efforts within Indigenous contexts. - Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Visibility and Data Equity: Insights from NIH RADx-UP
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed that the aggregation of information about Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders detracts from meaningful community interventions. Disaggregating data will inform specific research methods to work in AANHPI communities. - Protection of Participants in Community-Engaged Research by Institutional Review Boards: A Call for Action
Current IRB guidelines need to be updated to align their priorities and approaches to those of Community-Engaged Research. - Have a Little Faith: Overcoming Pandemic-Related Challenges to Designing and Implementing a COVID-19 Testing Trial in African American Churches
Fully engaging faith and health organization partners in all phases of the research with academic health science researchers helped identify and address study challenges when conducting COVID-19 prevention intervention trials with African American churches. - Enhancing Community Engagement in Research: A Tiered Approach
You & Me: Test and Treat (YMTT) offers a case study for a novel approach to community-engaged health disparities research that supports enhanced engagement of underserved populations and is consistent with the need for academic partners to promote equitable health interventions, such as access to COVID-19 testing and treatment for underserved populations.
RESEARCH SUMMARIES
- Community Partner Perceptions of Equitable Implementation Practices for a Promotores de Salud Intervention: A Qualitative Assessment
The authors explored community partner perspectives of implementation practices that focused on equity. Partners noted trust-building, communication, autonomy to adapt, capacity building, and shared mission as equitable implementation practices. On the other hand, intervention-community misfit, research-led decisions, and poor sustainability were identified as practices that did not focus on equity. - Building a Successful Research-Driven COVID-19 Testing Program: Results from an Academic-School Partnership
Shared decision making and problem solving about study implementation are essential, particularly in a dynamic environment with changing requirements driven by the pandemic. Flexible scheduling and enabling participant feedback were key for initial and ongoing subject participation. - Reaching Vulnerable and Underserved Communities in the U.S. Southwest Through a Successful COVID-19 Community-Academic Partnership
An equitable community-academic partnership, the involvement of local leaders, and the engagement of community health workers were critical for testing and providing COVID-19 related services to more than 5,000 previously underserved patients. - Partnering with Churches to Address COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Uptake in Trustworthy Contexts
African American churches can be robust partners for intervening on vaccine hesitancy as they can provide significant reach for messaging, particularly through electronic means. - A Translational Case Study of a Multisite COVID-19 Public Health Intervention Across Sequenced Research Trials
A two-pronged approach that integrates community engagement with intervention implementation through every phase of the developmental spectrum of public health interventions is bound to improve their effectiveness and reach, thereby promoting community collaboration and partnerships as well as mitigation of health disparities through sustained interventions that are responsive to diverse populations across communities. - Engaging School Communities during COVID-19: The Role of School Nurses
School nurses engaged an urban K–12 school district community to provide testing and risk mitigation during the pandemic. - Experiences and Lessons Learned from the RADx-UP Consortium Community Engagement Projects
Project teams meaningfully collaborated with community partners, contributed to positive research and intervention outcomes, and generated lessons for community-engaged interventions to achieve the greatest impact and sustainability. - Qualitative Evaluation of RADx-UP Projects Addressing COVID-19 Testing Disparities Among Underserved Populations
Despite the pandemic, RADx-UP projects fostered meaningful relationships and leveraged community-engaged principles to rapidly implement interventions and projects. Strengthening academic-community partnerships and using community-engaged principles increase health equity by prioritizing community voices during a public health emergency.
Guest editors of the supplement were:
- Emily M. D’Agostino, DPH, MS, MEd, MA
Duke Clinical Research Institute, the Duke Global Health Institute, and the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery (Occupational Therapy Doctorate Division) and Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC - Debra Oto-Kent, MPH
Health Education Council, Sacramento, CA - Miriam Nuño, PhD
Division of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences, UC Davis Health Medical Center, Sacramento, CA
See below for links to recent social media posts (x and LinkedIn). Please share them on your social media accounts.
For RADx-UP Updates and News, visit radx-up.org.
Your RADx-UP CDCC
Publications and Dissemination Committee