Resources for Stakeholder and Community Engagement*
As defined by the National Cancer Institute, implementation science (IS) is the study of methods to promote the adoption and integration of evidence-based practices, interventions, and policies into routine healthcare and public health settings to improve our impact on population health. This discipline is characterized by a variety of research designs and methodological approaches, partnerships with key stakeholder groups (e.g., patients, providers, organizations, systems, and/or communities), and the development and testing of ways to effectively and efficiently integrate evidence-based practices, interventions, and policies into routine health settings.
There have been recent calls for an increased focus on health equity in IS. Stakeholder/community engagement is an essential component for advancing health equity. Stakeholder engagement is a term often used in health services research and is similar to community engagement, often used in public health spaces. Stakeholders are anyone who has a stake in the delivery or outcomes of an intervention or policy, including healthcare providers and administrators, clinical and non-clinical staff, patients, and caregivers. Community may be defined in many ways, but typically refers to individuals, groups, and organizations external to the academic organization. Communities are often defined by a commonality such as geography, race/ethnicity, religion, or another feature.
We became aware of concerns about the use of the term “stakeholder” when referring to people with lived experience from the community, including some Indigenous populations. Therefore, we refer to all collaborators or contributors as community members in our annotations in this document. Here are two links to read more on the topic if you are interested: 1) As an evaluator, do I use words (e.g., stakeholder) that can be harmful to others? and 2) CDC’s 2020 Health Equity Style Guide for the COVID-19 Response: Principles and Preferred Terms for Non-Stigmatizing, Bias-Free Language
Researchers from fields of dissemination and implementation (D&I) and health equity/ health disparities are beginning to integrate principles, methods, frameworks, and tools from both fields. Community based participatory research, under the broad umbrella of community engagement, is a gold standard for health disparities research. As such, D&I researchers and practitioners should consider purposefully integrating community engagement into their work as one way to speed translation of knowledge to practice to improve health equity. Therefore, community engagement may promote equitable D&I practice and research.
This tool includes key readings, trainings and guidance, and other tools and resources to support community engagement in implementation science. The scope does not extend to clinical trial recruitment. The document is separated into two lists—one for researchers and one for community members. Resources included in both lists are denoted by an asterisk (*) to indicate opportunities for developing shared understanding among collaborators.
Contributors
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Joseph Astorino Nicola, PhD; Randy Schwartz, MSPH; Clare Viglione, MPH, RD; Aubrey Villalobos, DrPH, MEd; Eva Woodward, PhD
Note
* This public good was developed with funding from a CCIS public goods cycle.