Community Engagement Studios

Order of Operations

Investigators should begin by contacting CTSI to request a Community Engagement Studio (CES). CES can be facilitated at any stage but should be requested early in the research process, if possible, as CES may take up to 4 weeks to plan from the initial request.

The researcher then meets with the Community PARTners team to:

  1. Clarify the focus of the CES,
  2. Determine the characteristics of the community expert panel,
  3. Develop the questions that will be posed to the panel, and
  4. Review a template Powerpoint presentation (provided by the CES team) for use on the Studio day.

Next, the CES team coaches the investigator on communicating effectively with community experts. Based on the meeting sessions with the researcher, the CES team will identify community experts through a diverse, inclusive and equitable framework. Once identified, the CES team will prepare the group for the studio session, including community ethics training, honorarium set up, and review of the researcher’s work.

Finally on Studio Day, CTSI Community Engagement Core and ISP will facilitate. Studios will typically be about two hours in length.

By means of a follow up, notes from the CES are organized and presented to the researcher for feedback. Community participants will also receive the feedback.

Research findings typically take 17 years to reach the target community. Involving stakeholders, however, expedites the process and provides better results overall.