Community-Engaged Scholarship: Meeting Scholarly Project Requirements While Advancing Community Health

Abstract

The Challenge As medicine strives to address social determinants of health to eliminate health disparities and improve health outcomes, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education scholarship requirement presents an opportunity for resi-dents to apply systematic inquiry to community-identified problems. Trainees are expected to engage in scholarship, and this framework can be applied in a community setting, and can take into account the participatory nature, purpose, and unique challenges of community-engaged work. What Is Known Broadened definitions of scholarship and application of the Glassick criteria 1 beyond traditional research have pro-moted systematic inquiry in the context of health care systems, such as clinical practice, teaching, and quality improvement. This has expanded the ways in which trainees can apply a scholarly approach. 2 Community-engaged scholarship involves trainees in a mutually beneficial relationship with the community, and often combines aspects of other types of scholarship, including teaching and research, with community service and action. It entails participatory decision making, bidirectional learning, and contribution by both the academic and community partners at each step of the process. 3,4