Community Engagement and Outreach

Overview

The Community Engagement and Outreach Core (CoE) develops the capacity of Alliance-affiliated investigators, Alliance staff, and community partners to address identified health conditions in the PR Hispanic population through research, evidence-based practices, community engagement, community research strategies, and mentoring. Our Core use the model of the Community Academic Partnerships where citizens have a significant voice in determining the Alliance’s collaborative agenda and resource allocation, while promoting co-learning and empowerment to attend to health and social inequities.

Our core promotes and enhance CAPs and employ a community development approach in which citizens have a significant voice in determining the Alliance’s collaborative agenda and resource allocation, while promoting co-learning and empowerment to attend to health and social inequities. CoE is built on community and academic strengths and resources to reinforce the relationship with existing partners and expand to include new collaborators.

Goal & Objectives

CoE aims to increase the multi-sectorial coordination necessary for the large-scale social change needed to improve community health that affect Hispanic communities in Puerto Rico. The long-term goal of CoE is to catalyze and support meaningful Community Academic Partnerships (CAPs) to improve population health in PR.

The CoE looks to ensure community participation in Alliance decision-making to identify health priorities; to foster community research; and increase knowledge and skills of its members through training, consulting and mentoring; and to disseminate research findings and stimulate adoption of best practices for community engagement. We also propose to enhance and maintain community participation through a new Community Health & Research Council, to help identify research priorities for health conditions prevalent in Hispanic populations and assist in decisions-making for developing research initiatives addressing community health.

Core Aims

Specific Aim 1. Enhance and maintain community participation in identifying research priorities for health conditions prevalent in Hispanic populations.
Specific Aim 2. Develop the capacity of Alliance investigators, core staff, and community partners to address targeted health conditions through research, evidence-based, community engagement, and mentoring.
Specific Aim 3. Improve dissemination of research designs and finding to stimulate adoption of best practices for community engagement.

Main Activities

Mentoring and consultation to Alliance-affiliated researchers on research in community settings.
Resources for Alliance Researchers
Educational and training activities
Regional Community Forums
“Getting to Know you” & “Town Hall Meeting: Science & Health” sessions
Technical Assistance to address health priorities in Communities.
Community Engaged Research capacity building activities for researchers and for community-based organizations.
Technical assistance, consultation and financial support for collaborative efforts and Community Academic Research Partnership (CAPs) development.
Translational research and Evidence Based Practices (EBP) promotion.
Collaborative research partnerships promotion and community research dissemination, increasing public trust in research.

Core Accomplishments

From 2010-2018, The Community Based Research Core (OCRE) under the Puerto Rico Clinical & Translational Research Consortium (PRCTRC) supported 20 Community Academic Partnerships (CAPs) (12 community engaged, 4 Community Based Participatory Research, 2 clinical research initiated, 2 community driven), collaborating in 5 MOUs with community-based organizations and other stakeholders; 5 multidisciplinary science teams.

Our Services

CoE SERVICES

The Community Engagement and Outreach Core (CoE) help communities to develop the organizational infrastructure for ongoing dissemination of findings and knowledge gained to all partners. Improving current methods of addressing community health by catalyzing the integration of community and stakeholders in research endeavors in the Alliance partner institutions.

We have expanded our impact by partnering with additional expert staff (mentors, coordinators and consultants) and resources at the PMSF and the UCC as sites for community engagement to address health conditions that affect the medically underserved, are prevalent and/or that are the priority of community leaders. We provide consultations for developing research initiatives addressing community health. Also, CoE educate Alliance researchers on consultation and collaboration with communities, to make this an indispensable component in their research.

Some of the services we provide include:

Developing Community-Academic Partnerships
Developing Evidence Based Practices within a Community-Academic Partnership Relation
Funding identification for Community Based Research

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES INVENTORY

One way in which CoE accomplishes its mission of building capacity for sustainable translational research through the establishment of community-academic partnerships, is working in collaboratively with the Puerto Rico Evidence Based Board (PREBB). The PREBB is a diverse group of stakeholders that are responsible for developing and implementing an agenda to identify, establish, promote, and disseminate evidence-based practices/programs in areas of health promotion and disease prevention for Puerto Rico. This body is being subsidized by the Puerto Rico Strategic Framework State Prevention Enhancement Grant (PRSPF SPE) (SAMHSA Grant No. 1U79SP018656-01).

A major goal of PREBB is to build and maintain an easily accessible, user-friendly centralized listing of EBPs in various areas of health concern, with detailed information about each program presented in Spanish (*Archive of Evidence Based Programs and Practices for Prevention*). CoE’s contribution to this broader effort has been to produce comprehensive lists of EBPs in the Alliance identified health conditions affecting the Hispanic population: HIV/AIDS, cancer, neurological disorders, and cardiovascular health.

Here you will find a thorough listing of EBPs in the areas of HIV and Cancer Prevention with helpful information to make informed decisions when selecting which program/practice to implement in your project. (Comparable listings will be posted for neurological disorders and cardiovascular health in early 2013.) This dissemination tool will serve as a resource for academic researchers, community-based organizations, and other community stakeholders to evaluate and choose the most appropriate evidence-based program for implementation in their service area or community in Puerto Rico, resulting in more culturally appropriate, effective and cost-effective interventions.

TOOLS OR RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Tools

Recommendations when selecting EBPS

¿Que es una Práctica Basada en Evidencia?

Trainings

For training related to Community Engagement & Outreach Core, please track the Alliance Training Calendar for more information

Videos

Collaborating Institutions

Mapa de instituciones colaboradores investigacion [31]

REQUEST SUPPORT

CoE RFS: Each year, CoE opens a Request for Support Opportunity (“RFS”) to promote community-academic partnership start up and development. A combination of technical assistance and economic incentive is offered throughout a period of a year, with the option of a longer period of technical assistance in those cases where the partners decide to continue working together beyond the funding period. Solicitation is open year around through CoE’s contact personnel: alianzacomunidad.rcm@upr.edu

To request support for: