Community and Collaboration Core
Community Engagement is the process of working together with groups of people who are connected in some way– they may live close together or share a similar situation that affects their wellbeing (CDC 1997). Community-Engaged Research (CEnR) is an approach to developing and conducting research that incorporates community engagement.
As part of the mission of The Rockefeller University Center for Clinical and Translational Science (RU-CCTS), the Community and Collaboration Core team builds partnerships between researchers and community members and fosters community-engaged research to improve individual and community health. An early and sustained strategic partnership with Clinical Directors Network (CDN), a practice-based research network (PBRN) and AHRQ-designated Center of Excellence for practice-based research and learning, has been integral to our success developing and conducting community-engaged research.
To engage with communities, we:
- Welcome patients, clinicians, community partners, and other stakeholders to work with us throughout the entire research process.
- Together, we share information about community and research needs and priorities, and how to align goals and share resources and responsibilities.
- We work together to build skills and tools and work as partners on research that can improve health.
We aim to involve the community at every stage of the research process so investigators and community members can learn from each other. This approach allows us to focus on health issues that are important to the community. This also lets us get the results of research studies back to people as quickly as possible and have the greatest positive impact on people’s health.
We build partnerships among basic and clinical researchers with community health clinicians to develop research questions that address urgent health care needs of their patient populations. Our work spans the entire spectrum of translational science – from basic research in the laboratory, to testing and applying interventions in practice, to changing policy to impact public health. We call this Full Spectrum Translational Research.
The RU-CCTS is supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NIH/NCATS) UL1TR001866. We engage communities with the following Specific Aims:
Learn more about Full Spectrum Translational Research and community-engaged research projects at Rockefeller University
Hear what investigators and community partners say about partnering in Full Spectrum Translational and community-engaged research in our Projects page
Access online CME-accredited Research Training