A discussion among deans on advancing community engaged research

Abstract

The benefits of community‐engaged research (CEnR) have been documented in the literature. However, the adoption of community engaged (CE) and participatory approaches among health researchers remains limited. The Boston University (BU) Clinical Translational Science Institute's community engagement program initiated a discussion among five BU Deans to explore their approaches to support the practice of CEnR among faculty in their schools. The discussion was recorded and the transcript analyzed to identify and explore themes that emerged. Most strategies discussed by the Deans were not focused on changing institutional systems to advance CEnR. Instead, the analyses showed that institutional CE efforts highlighted by the Deans were focused on “responsibility centered on one person” or “research mentors.” Approaches to developing a culture of CEnR that centers responsibility for promoting it on a few people in a university may place significant burden on leadership and researchers and is not an effective way to promote culture change. Systems change is needed to support CEnR, improve accountability, and realize successful partnerships between academic institutions and communities. The dialogue among Deans focused on the topic of CEnR provided an effective method to catalyze discussion and over time may help to strengthen a culture of CEnR research.

INTRODUCTION

Community engaged (CE) and participatory research approaches are designed to center research on the priorities of populations who are hardly reached by research and, not by chance, disproportionately impacted by chronic health conditions. ¹ The underlying premise is that people who experience the disproportionate burden of disease, as well as the frontline health workforce and agencies who serve them, hold knowledge critical for both studying and addressing pressing public health concerns impacting them. ² , ³ , ⁴ , ⁵ The benefits of community engagement in the design of highly effective public health interventions and the advancement of translational science have been established. ⁶ , ⁷ , ⁸ However, the adoption of CE and participatory approaches among health researchers remains limited.

The lack of uptake of community engagement approaches by researchers has been attributed to several factors, the most salient of which are trust and time. ⁹ , ¹⁰ , ¹¹ Researchers may not trust or honor community expertise, which reinforces the community's lack of trust in academic researchers. Many academic institutions have a history of harmful extractive behavior in communities, which contributes to community mistrust. ¹² , ¹³ These interpersonal challenges do not fully consider the role institutional policies and practices may play in shaping how academic researchers operate in communities. Moreover, given the incentive systems currently in place, including what is valued for successful promotion and recognition in the field, the time it takes to engage in partnership development and to establish trust is not always prioritized by academic researchers. In short, the pressure to produce coupled with a lack of recognition of community partner expertise within the scientific community can deter researchers from engaging in participatory research.

Community engagement requires that researchers spend time outside of the institution establishing relationships. Although most institutions place value on faculty service, time spent for developing partnerships for research does not squarely fit in this category. Furthermore, community‐academic research partnerships require a different set of skills than service. Research partnerships with community involve power‐sharing, co‐creation of knowledge, and negotiating research priorities that are mutually beneficial to the researcher and the community. Researcher partnerships also necessitate that the faculty partner become the interface between community and the university's administrative and financial systems to compensate community collaborators. Yet, these systems are designed to support researchers, not community partners.

Institutional policies and procedures can deter community engagement and participatory approaches. There have been numerous capacity building and training efforts designed to increase researcher preparedness for community engagement, which are focused on the nuts and bolts of partnership as well as institutional review. ¹⁴ , ¹⁵ However, these efforts can fall short because they largely focus on changing researcher behavior. Much like providing an inhaler to a patient with asthma who lives in a mold‐ridden home, they do little to address the root cause, which is that institutional structures of the academy often do not support the intended behavioral change. Researchers will only partner if (1) they see value and (2) there are systems in place to encourage and support partnerships. Although we are often quick to point to the ways in which living environments shape health and health behavior, we pay far less attention to how the academic research enterprise impacts our approach to research and community partnerships.

Dialogue can catalyze both meaningful engagement and systems transformation. For example, deliberative dialogues harness the expertise of diverse stakeholders to examine complex problems and to facilitate change. ¹⁶ This paper describes efforts by the Boston University (BU) Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Community Engagement (CE) Program to advance institutional dialogues about advancing community engagement. Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) programs were designed to accelerate the pace of health research translation from the bench science to practice and policy. ¹⁷ Community engagement has been a critical component of the CTSA program since its inception. ¹⁰ The CTSI CE program specifically seeks to create university systems, specifically policies, and procedures that support community partnership development. As part of this effort, the CTSI CE Program leaders engaged the Deans from five schools to explore strategies for promoting academic researchers being present in and engaging with community. We focused on the Schools of Medicine, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Public Health, Education, and Social Work for two reasons: (1) each of these schools have faculty who use CE and participatory research approaches, and (2) faculty from these schools have consistently registered for our community engagement capacity building programs.

DOMINANT STRUCTURES

The BU CTSI CE program aims to build institutional infrastructure that supports researchers working in partnership with communities to study and advance local health priorities. This necessitates institutional culture change. Ideology shapes environments and in turn behavior. Freire pointed out the oppressive nature of the Western academy, referring to it as Educação Bancária (the banking system of education), a hierarchical system in which experts generate knowledge which is passed on to “empty‐vessel” learners, who the experts fill with information. ¹⁸ Through this process “experts” dictate what students learn, reinforcing dominant narratives rooted in colonialism and racial capitalism. These dominant narratives shape institutional norms and practice, ¹⁹ creating an extractive environment where impact is confounded with occupational prestige and recognition is based largely on production. In this context, relationships can become transactional rather than relational, inclusive, or participatory. In such extractive environments, academic/community relationships are seen as a means to an end. The community is relegated to the role of the “subject” or “participant” and, as such, policies are designed to maintain the expert‐subject dichotomy embedded in academic/community relationships. For example, fiscal relationships, other than subject payments and stipends, prove difficult for CE academic researchers. ²⁰ Even in cases where individual researchers aim to engage in more equitable financial arrangements with communities, challenges arise as the result of complex bureaucratic processes that govern contractual arrangements at institutions. ²¹ , ²²

Similarly, the literature indicates merit systems as well as tenure and promotion processes deter researchers from engaging in community partnerships. ²³ , ²⁴ Deans, as academic leadership, can play a critical role in setting expectations and establishing norms. ²⁵ They oversee school strategy, mission, and budget as well as approve faculty hiring. In addition, Deans may be able to shape merit as well as tenure and promotion processes and, as such, may be positioned to enact systems that support and elevate community engagement. At our institution, we have seen Deans catalyze important efforts that support community engagement through service‐learning programs, practice partnerships with community and public institutions, and pipeline programs. To date, these efforts have focused largely on teaching and service and to a smaller extent research. Deans as a collective may be able to advocate for important changes at the institutional and national levels to advance community engaged research (CEnR). We hosted a panel of five Deans at one large academic institution as part of the Third Thursdays: A Community Engaged Research Speaker Series titled, Bi‐Directional Conversations to Change University Policy. The Speaker Series is a public event, drawing an audience from BU, its affiliated academic research hospital, other academic institutions, and community members and organizations.

A CONVERSATION WITH DEANS

Deans from five schools were invited to participate as panelists in a moderated discussion on Zoom focused on CEnR and the promotion process. It was further explained to the Deans that early career researchers and students alike are often dissuaded from engaging in participatory research and that community engagement has also been categorized by some as service as opposed to research. The goal of the panel was to discuss CEnR, its value, and how it should be evaluated in the context of tenure and promotion. All five Deans agreed to participate as members of the panel.

Prior to the event, the Deans were provided with an outline of the objectives of the panel as well as a set of questions to consider. The objectives of the panel were to present interdisciplinary perspectives on CE, to learn how CE is valued and assessed by academic leaders, including the role of CE research in tenure and promotion processes. Deans were asked to provide introductory remarks discussing (1) how CE fits into their school's mission, (2) the extent to which CE is explicitly written into their school's strategic plan, and (3) how CE research is operationalized by faculty and staff in their schools. The Dean's remarks were followed by the CTSI CE program co‐director posing a series of questions to them (see Table 1). Once the moderated discussion was complete, the discussion was open to the audience.

TABLE 1.

Moderator's questions.

Moderator's questions
What institutional level barriers to community engaged research do your faculty face?
2When evaluating faculty, how is community engaged or participatory research weighed?
3There have been efforts at other institutions to re‐evaluate the tenure and promotion process to incentivize community engaged and participatory research. When you think about the processes within your school or BU more broadly, are there opportunities to redefine impact and to incentivize CE and participatory approaches?
4How might a focus on community engagement intersect with Diversity Equity and Inclusion work in your school?
5What recommendations would you make for doctoral students and trainees who are interested in integrating CE approaches into their work?

Abbreviations: BU, Boston University; CE, community engages.

Over 90 participants joined the 1‐h Zoom‐based panel of Deans for a discussion. The session was recorded, and a Zoom transcript was generated. The moderator and a second member of the CTSI CE program team reviewed the transcript. Each read through the transcript multiple times to identify emergent themes, which they independently highlighted in their respective copies of the transcript. They met to discuss the themes and the overall transcript. The second team member then extracted quotes to illustrate the emergent themes, which are highlighted below. The commentary was sent to the Deans for their feedback. One of the Deans found the commentary to be critical, particularly the discussion related to dominant narratives, which was revised to clarify the language and to shift the tone.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN THE SCHOOLS

We learned that all five schools had active practice as well as research partnerships with community groups and organizations. Community engagement was discussed as important in the context of teaching, service, and research. Faculty and other researchers interested in CE and participatory research approaches often lament the time associated with community academic partnerships, whereas others postpone community engagement until after the dissertation, or tenure. They also grappled with the challenge posed by “impact” metrics. Throughout the discussion, Deans alluded to the possibilities for building infrastructure to support CE faculty. We describe key themes from the Deans' discussion below.

BARRIERS TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Deans across schools noted faculty who use CE and participatory research approaches face similar barriers, for example, the time intensive nature of community engagement.

…in terms of promotion, you know, community outreach is sort of an assumed part, … I think that the challenge for our faculty comes in the form of the required time commitment. Setting up a community project that has intensive community outreach….

They also acknowledged the complexity of sustaining partnerships over time.

I think sustaining these relationships once you've created them is incredibly complicated and time consuming, …but really critically important to the long‐term success of our research teams.

Deans discussed the metrics for tenure and promotion at research intensive institutions, for grant applications, publications, and achieving scholarly prestige. They noted that CE and participatory methods—although they are gaining traction in some fields—are still not seen as “mainstream.” As such, CE researchers can face challenges seeking external funding and publishing in “top” journals, which may pose challenges in the tenure and promotion processes.

And the vicious cycle of course, that impact factors that combine to help our faculty get promoted at an R1 institution, are often negatively impacted by the places they publish, those very places that are more sensitive to the issues of community engagement.

This can lead to faculty postponing or avoiding “[participatory] methodologies and [instead] using approaches that are less community engaged than we would like them to be.”

EXAMPLES OF DEPARTMENT OR SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE WHICH SUPPORT COMMUNITY ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP

The Deans discussed ways department or school infrastructure can support newer faculty committed to CE work, including initiatives to bridge the community and the school. One Dean described an initiative called the Activist Lab, which, according to the website “offers our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners the opportunity to develop tools they can use to be effective change agents.” He went on to explain that through the Activist Lab…

…we have an associate dean, whose primary charge is to be in the community building relationships with those agencies, like public schools and nonprofits, where we can then more readily access community members, and include them in our research partnerships.

Different than having just one faculty member lead the development of community relationships, the Dean described working to build infrastructure for ongoing community partnerships that faculty can get involved with. Moreover, associate and assistant Dean roles were created to advance community building. What leaders pay attention to demonstrates a primary way to embed CE roles into organizational culture. ¹⁹ In this case, the Dean has created leadership roles focused on community engagement and promotes these efforts through social media and on the school's website in efforts to build a culture of community engagement.

Another Dean discussed nurturing faculty, although specific examples of how faculty are nurtured were not provided. Instead, the Dean provided examples of different types of promotion tracks faculty might choose to pursue.

…there [are] many different ways in which we try to make sure that we nurture faculty to make sure they can still succeed, even with making community engagement a core part of their work, and there's different ways of doing that, we also have multiple different tracks for promotion, all of which are very much equal and in our school and we try to make sure that we match the faculty interest with the track that the faculty should be on depending on the type of work that the faculty members engage.

Although different tracks provide faculty with options, this model does not advance a culture of community engagement. Promotion tracks may create a tiered system, further devaluing CE and participatory researchers receiving fewer accolades, benefits, and supports than those who do not use the approach. Moreover, this approach suggests CE and participatory researchers should adapt to fit into existing structures rather developing strategies that transform those structures.

Similarly, the idea of pairing new faculty with experienced community engagement research mentors was also broached by a member of the panel to support new faculty as they build relationships in communities where working relationships have already been established. Although this was seen as a possibility, it was also recognized that it places the responsibility on impacted individuals rather than transforming systems. Moreover, the current system of rewards does not support CE mentoring efforts and institutional systems changes would be required to advance such efforts.

WORK COLLABORATIVELY ON A SHARED VISION TO AVOID SILOS THAT INHIBIT COMMUNITY ENGAGED RESEARCH

Although this was not discussed in detail by the Deans, efforts to incentivize community engagement may include supporting collaborative efforts across schools, centers, and institutes. CE work benefits from internal institutional collaborative teams as well as partnerships with communities. Deans shared that building partnerships across the university, including bringing together centers and institutes, are needed so that “collective human capital is jointly shared and collectively directed to make change.” If supported, the development of collaborations may lower the barriers to engagement in the community and the burden of having many teams approaching a single community for research.

The Deans and audience participants acknowledged that institutional silos detract from CE and participatory research approaches. University partners often work in isolation, unaware of other university researchers working and developing relationships in the very same communities.

BU is an amazing school in that we do a lot with the community, the problem has always been that we're siloed so that your right hand doesn't always know what your left hand is doing…

It is often the case that faculty from across the different schools at the university partner with the same organizations but are unaware of each other's presence. This lack of coordination, as well as inconsistencies across schools, can pose challenges for partner organizations.

IMPACT: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE TO ADVANCE JUSTICE?

Perhaps the most telling part of the conversation with the Deans was the discussion related to impact. In their opening comments and throughout the conversation, Deans referenced the notion of “impact.” Deans explained that efforts to advance a culture of community engagement would require changing how impact is defined. It was noted that this conversation, although it could be led by Deans, needs to happen within professional organizations and with leaders in one's respective field. Deans noted that faculty are reviewed by their peers as part of the tenure and promotion process, suggesting that shifting culture in the field would be an important step toward shifting institutional culture. Given that these same peers serve as journal editors and grant reviewers and are in essence gatekeepers, this culture shift needs to take place at the university level and should extend into the broader realms of the academic endeavor.

Although indeed it is important to shift cultural norms in our respective fields, tenure reviewers react to guidance sent by the institution. Outlining institutional values of CE and participatory scholarship in said guidance may also shift how peers in the field might assess promotion cases. It is imperative that our institutions place value on CE and participatory research approaches and to center the priorities of the communities that surround us.

In the context of the dominant structure of capitalism, impact is equated to production, which contributes to relationships that are transactional, and, as such, community partnerships are seen as a means to an end. In this context, the underlying ask of the researcher is “how can the partnership help me achieve my production goals,” in contrast to the decolonial goals upon which participatory research was established. Because racism, fueled by White supremacy ideology, is entwined with capitalism, indigenous forms of knowing elevated by CE and participatory scholars are further degraded. Outcomes are favored over process, bigger is better, and excellence and rigor are equated to whiteness and comfort. ²⁶

CONCLUSIONS

Bringing together the Deans we explored the barriers to CE and participatory approaches in our institution. The Deans generated ideas to support faculty who use CE and participatory research approaches, however, most did not involve changing existing structures and systems. Instead, approaches were focused on ways to make the current system work and to leverage the successes of some researchers to benefit others in the context of a systems that is not working very well for researchers or communities. This discussion pointed to the need for systems change to build the capacity of the institution to “walk along with” the expertise and power in the communities and to create an organizational culture that places a high value of CE and participatory research.

FUNDING INFORMATION

This study was supported by the National Center to Advance Translational Science, National Institutes of Health, through Grant UL54TR004130.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

L.S.M. is an external evaluator for the Boston Public Health Commission and Action for Boston Area Development as well as a qualitative research consultant for Boston Medical Center and The City School. All other authors declared no competing interests for this work.

Sprague Martinez L, Chassler D, Lobb R, Hakim D, Pamphile J, Battaglia TA. A discussion among deans on advancing community engaged research. Clin Transl Sci. 2023;16:557‐563. doi: 10.1111/cts.13478