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270 Four Pillars of Community Health and Research Engagement: The UT Southwestern CTSA Program’s Innovative Approach to Putting the Community Health Science Model into Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2024

Heather Kitzman
Affiliation:
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Saundra Pennington
Affiliation:
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Meera Patel
Affiliation:
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Emilie Ruiz
Affiliation:
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Libby Gracia
Affiliation:
UT Southwestern Medical Center
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Abstract

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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Goals: Engage in collaborative approaches that target health disparities, especially among communities experiencing poverty or ethnic/racial minorities. Develop and sustain effective community-academic partnerships that foster trust through bidirectional communication and shared leadership leading to improved translational research. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The Community Health Science model was developed at UTSW over the past 20 years in efforts to integrate practices across 3 component areas – clinical practice, population health, and community organizations – into a single collaborative effort to improve health and reduce disparities. As part of the CTSA Program’s translational science efforts, we have extended this model to promote community engagement in research as an additional strategy needed to achieve health equity. Our Office of Community Health & Research Engagement operates 9 programs that each fit within one or more of 4 overarching conceptual pillars - Education/Resources, Collaboration/Partnership, Outreach/Service, Priorities/Perspectives - serving to bridge the community-academic divide and build strong, trusting relationships. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The implementation of our model has resulted in measurable outcomes. To date, we have hosted 23 HealthStreet community events resulting in 464 health screenings, 203 health needs assessments completed, and 123 individuals joining our Community Research Registry allowing for future contact to participate in research. Our Community Health Coalition, comprised of 32 organizations, provides a forum for co-learning between researchers and stakeholders. We have awarded 9 grants ($175,800) for community-engaged projects. Our Community Advisory Panel has participated in 8 sessions with research teams. A total of 13 projects utilized the Spanish Language Resource, for a total of 30,617 translated words. Finally, we have hosted 9 Community Engagement Grand Rounds lectures, which included a total of 559 attendees. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our model strengthens our capacity to build trust with communities and facilitate sustained community-academic partnerships. By prioritizing community engagement in research, we improve health equity by understanding community perspectives and increasing diversity in trials. We hope our model can be disseminated and scaled for greater impact.

Type
Health Equity and Community Engagement
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. The Association for Clinical and Translational Science