The Community Engagement (CE) program bridges researchers and local communities, building sustainable partnerships to ensure that research initiatives meet real community needs. Researchers benefit by focusing on timely, responsive, culturally relevant research questions, while community members can directly influence research choices and academic-community relations. Moreover, CE provides support that ensures researchers understand the health needs and research barriers of special populations and works to facilitate new academic-community partnerships. As such, CE has developed a range of novel strategies and approaches to engage diverse communities and facilitate meaningful academic-community partnerships.

Engaging communities from different backgrounds and cultures is important to ensure that medications and interventions are effective for different groups. Many of the available medications and therapies were developed based on clinical trials that included a vast majority of White/Caucasian research participants, in spite of the fact that minority groups such as African American and Latino communities bear the greatest burden across various diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. While minority groups are continuing to grow and make up a large proportion of the U.S. population, they are considerably underrepresented in clinical trial participants.

This lack of participation in research may contribute to the many health disparities we see in our most vulnerable and underserved communities. Engaging these communities requires different approaches, including providing culturally relevant educational information, listening to and responding to the communities’ fears and concerns about research and the healthcare system more generally, and empowering them to be informed research participants.

2023 CE Annual Report

This report details the accomplishments of the Community Engagement (CE) team at the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (SC CTSI) in 2023. It highlights our dedication to advancing health equity through various initiatives. These initiatives include community outreach and education programs, capacity building opportunities for community health workers, and the development of collaborative partnerships focused on addressing health disparities.

The report showcases the impact of these efforts through success stories from our community partners and testimonials from community members who have benefited from our programs.

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In the links below, we highlight some of the varying approaches our team has utilized when working with communities in order to help remove barriers to research participation. The work described here includes a variety of approaches to achieve these goals - community organizing, social marketing, integrating the research community into the lay community, and utilizing the power of entertainment to provide accurate and culturally appropriate messaging about health and research.

Current Initiatives:

Nickerson Gardens Place-Based Approach to Health
The Fundamentals of Research: Promotores Training
Hollywood, Health, and Society: Entertainment Media as a Means to Address Health Disparities
California State University, Los Angeles: Internship Program
Plain Language Results Dissemination Initiative

Ongoing Initiatives:

Community Listening Sessions
Educational Workshops and Trainings
Our Community, Our Health / Los Angeles: Bridging Researchers and Diverse Los Angeles Communities

Past Initiatives:

We will continue to develop, test, and deliver innovative approaches to community engagement that will lead to a reduction in health disparities and an increase in healthier communities across populations.

Learn more about the Community Engagement team: