Session: Co-Creating Knowledge and Power-Sharing: The Importance of Using Community-Based Research Methods with Marginalized Communities (Society for Social Work and Research 26th Annual Conference - Social Work Science for Racial, Social, and Political Justice)

Community-engaged research models, like community-based participatory research (CBPR), are rooted in social justice and aim to flatten the power imbalance between researchers and communities by engaging with communities throughout the research process. Utilizing CBPR methods is one practice that can increase the accuracy of research, facilitate opportunities for the co-construction of knowledge, and create more equity across the research process. Research, for many disciplines, does not historically include participation from members of the community beyond being subjects in the research project. This exclusion leads to both translational and implementation challenges, but also increases the risk of harm to marginalized, under-represented, and historically oppressed communities. Community-engaged research falls along a continuum ranging from community-based (i.e., research takes place in the community rather than a lab) to community-driven (i.e., active participation by community in the research process). In CBPR, for example, community members work closely with the research team to identify the problem, develop the research questions and methods, collect data, conduct the data analysis, interpret results, and disseminate findings.

This symposium presents five community-engaged research projects all funded through Robert Wood Johnson’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program. Collectively, these projects aim to build and strengthen an equitable culture of health. Individually, the projects highlight the methods used, process of community engagement, and target outcomes to impact health through youth development programs and policy to prevent violence, clinical practice and services, addressing structural violence, intervening to reduce the impacts of incarceration on family health, and how scholars can be supported to engage in this time-intensive research. These projects emphasize the value, uniqueness, and depth that emerges from collaborative, participatory work with communities. Presenters will describe the ways community engagement shaped their research process and strategies they used for building trust and engaging communities in this work. Presenters will also discuss innovative approaches to disseminate findings effectively to various stakeholders and through major political- and public health-related crises.