Engaging community health center advisors to identify research priorities for health equity

Abstract

Background: Community health centers (CHCs) and those most burdened by disease are important partners in setting research agendas to address the needs of people who are medically underserved. Objectives: Identify and prioritize health equity-focused research priorities using a collaborative approach to community engagement of key informants. Methods: We used five stepwise phases from January 2021 to February 2023 to formulate and prioritize a set of health equity-focused research topics among CHC staff (leaders, clinicians), their key advisors (patients and community members), and researchers from academic medical centers in California. Phases included: (1) community advisory board formation, (2) key informant identification, (3) individual/small group interview guide development and administration, (4) initial health equity-focused topic categorization, and (5) in-person meeting with community advisors for final topic prioritization using nominal group technique. Results: Twenty individual or small group interviews were completed with 44 diverse participants, along with engagement from our community advisory board, which resulted in an initial list of 11 health equity-focused research topics. Ninety advisors including diverse community members, CHC staff/leaders, and researchers prioritized six overarching research topics. Final prioritized health-equity focused research topics include addressing mental health challenges, improving public's trust in healthcare and science, healthcare delivery models to increase access and utilization, build and sustain an anti-racist healthcare system, strategies and interventions to address health misinformation, and continuing and sustaining polices based on lessons learned from COVID-19. Conclusions: Results offer future direction for community-engaged research agendas to advance health equity among medically underserved and vulnerable patient populations.