Table 1.

Key lessons learned and future directions

Leadership by CTSA CE cores	During the pandemic, all seven CTSAs played a critical lead role in both community engagement and in design and conduct of high-impact CEnR. Ongoing leadership by such cores will be key in quickly responding to similar watershed experiences in the future.
Infrastructure for supporting long-term Engagement	All CTSAs leveraged existing long-term bidirectional community partnerships. These relationships must be fostered and sustained long-term so when such crises suddenly emerge, all partners can build on existing trust and mutual respect
Need for Community engagement in times of crisis	The fundamental principles of meaningful and authentic stakeholder engagement are of paramount importance during a public health crisis. These include continuous check-ins, maintaining rather than withdrawing from engaged relationships, identification and recognition of challenges, recalibration of expectations and timelines and most importantly, prioritizing the core needs of community partners.
Community engagement can be successfully done virtually	Despite long-standing approaches involving face-to-face engagement, we realized if needed it is possible to leverage technology, including video-conferencing and asynchronous communication, to support remote engagement and CEnR. We found many components of CE and CEnR can be done though distance and non-face-to-face approaches. Such virtual approaches will be an important additional tool that we will to continue to include as part of CE and CEnR strategies for our investigators, community partners and study participants.
Virtual engagement does not replace face-to-face interactions	Many academic and community partners miss the personal interactions that are at the heart of our work. Many would like to resume these when safe and possible to do so.

CTSA, Clinical and Translational Science Award Program; CE, Community Engagement; CEnR, Community Engaged research.