Community engagement and the centrality of ‘working relationships’ in health research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21878615 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Vincent (0000-0001-5124-2593, Robin Medical (United States)), Dorcas Kamuya (0000-0001-7107-1736, Kenya Medical Research Institute), Bipin Adhikari (0000-0001-8981-3910, Mahidol University), Deborah Nyirenda (0000-0002-5867-4687, University of Liverpool), James V Lavery (0000-0001-8520-8377, Emory University), Sassy Molyneux (0000-0001-9522-416X, Kenya Medical Research Institute, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | e015350 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | BMJ Global Health (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2059-7908 • E-ISSN: 2059-7908 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/bmjgh-2024-015350 |
| PMID | 38663905 |
| OpenAlex | W4395468689 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 13 |
Community engagement (CE) is widely accepted as a critical aspect of health research because of its potential to make research more ethical, relevant and well implemented. Although CE activities linked to international health research involving Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs; see author note) have proliferated and are increasingly described in published literature, there is a lack of conceptual clarity around how engagement is understood to ‘work’.1 Ultimately, the evidence base for CE remains underdeveloped,2 despite increasing scholarship. We conducted a realist review–a theory-driven approach to evidence synthesis—to better understand the causal dynamics of CE practices associated with health research in LMICs.3 We selected large malaria trials as the entry point for the review because there is a well-established tradition of CE in malaria research, and because this area provides a good representation of current CE practice in international biomedical research involving LMICs. In this commentary, we summarise and discuss the key findings and implications of the review. Our review highlighted that at the core of CE in health research is the establishment of ‘working relationships’ between researchers and other local stakeholders, influenced by the culture of engagement in research institutions, in turn, shaped by the wider health research paradigm context (figure 1, adapted from Vincent et al 3). Figure 1 Core Community engagement dynamic of working relationships and influences of context. The centrality of working relationships underscores the importance of relational dynamics in CE. Working relationships are influenced by differences between and among researchers and other local stakeholders in wealth, power and culture, and depend on four mutually reinforcing relational dynamics
Centrality · Community engagement · Health services research · Political science · Public health · Public relations · Scholarship · Sociology · Ethics in Clinical Research · Global Health and Surgery · Health Policy Implementation Science · Medicine · Nursing
Good and Bad Research Collaborations
What’s in a name? Unpacking ‘Community Blank ’ terminology in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health
Assessing how global health partnerships function
A Framework for Community and Stakeholder Engagement
Introduction
Towards Relational Sociology
Promoting the social value of research in Kenya
Ethics and the ethnography of medical research in Africa
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |