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The Importance of Engaged Research

The workshop began with the rationale for building capacity for engaged research, highlighting what can be achieved when societal impact and community needs are centered. According to a 2022 report by the Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education,¹ explained Kimberly Jones, planning committee member and associate dean for research and graduate education at the College of Engineering and Architecture at Howard University, engaging communities and other partners in research can

• enhance the relevance and increase the impact of science on society;
• broaden participation by increasing the number and diversity of stakeholders involved in the scientific process; and
• advance discovery, increase innovation, and improve product design.

Engaged research offers opportunities for both science and communities and other partners to benefit. A panel comprised of three teams of engaged researchers and their community partners illustrated how engaged research can benefit partners, researchers, and society. In a moderated discussion led by Jones, panelists also discussed factors that contributed to their successful collaborative work.

CROSSING THE DIVIDE: LEARNING FROM A DISCONNECTED NEIGHBORHOOD

To showcase how engaged research can effectively address community needs, Jennifer Wilding, community development specialist for the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, and John James, president of the Wendell Phillips Neighborhood Association, described the Participatory Action Research for Fed Success (PAR4 FED) initiative—a project that ultimately benefited both the researchers and the community.

Wilding began by explaining that each of the 12 Federal Reserve banks has a Community Development Department that works to promote economic mobility in low-income and underserved communities. The PAR4 FED initiative was established in 2020 by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s Community Development Department as part of their mission to encourage the use of engaged research to promote economic mobility in low-income and underserved communities. With the Urban Institute as a technical advisor, a pilot project was designed to address equitable broadband access—specifically, to determine why subscription rates remained low in some neighborhoods despite broadband access. The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank partnered with the Wendell Phillips Neighborhood Association, the Kansas City Public Library, and aSTEAM Village,² an organization that helps young people move into the digital workforce. Together, they conducted a “data walk,” a facilitated conversation to share the Federal Reserve Bank’s research about broadband use in the neighborhood and to hear residents’ perspectives about the accuracy and the implications of that research for the neighborhood. A report generated from these insights was published in 2023,³ Wilding said. She noted two specific benefits of the partnership approach:

1. Community partners facilitated the connection between the Federal Reserve Bank and the neighborhood so that community members were comfortable with the partnership and did not feel like “the Fed had parachuted in.”
2. Community partners were passionate and knowledgeable about the project’s topic, and their active involvement represented an excellent resource, providing researchers with novel insights they may not otherwise have gained.

To act on the study’s findings, James and aSTEAM Village focused on addressing neighborhood needs while the Federal Reserve Bank shared the report with policy makers and participated in a research forum to enhance digital equity efforts. Highlighting the importance of the information gathered through community engagement, Wilding stated, “We are sure that we got a different reception than if we had only showed up with our maps.”

James offered his perspective on the community benefits of this work and the factors that contributed to the project’s success. Emphasizing that effective partnerships generate solutions or action items for all stakeholders, James said that the collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank resulted in key deliverables including insightful data, a pathway to change, and tangible opportunities for the community. Specifically, because the data walk revealed inequitable access to broadband and a significant lack of trust in traditional broadband carriers, a cooperative with aSTEAM Village was subsequently developed to provide community-based broadband access—an outcome that supported both local economic growth and youth education. Furthermore, James reported, data that the Federal Reserve Bank shared with Missouri policy makers resulted in a grant to be used for digital literacy training in the community.

The partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank was participatory and empowering, James said. Reflecting on the experience as a community member being approached by researchers and the conditions needed to feel empowered in a research partnership, he reported, “When a community becomes a subject for research, we must come to the table with patience, and we must come to the table with interview skills because it is our job to determine what the baseline goal of researchers is and how the partnership can be successful for both sides.” From the community’s perspective, he continued, “settling in” to a partnership is facilitated by deep engagement in a project, beginning in its planning stages. “Neighborhoods are turned off by grant awardees that are just checking boxes on a checklist,” he said, and instead are encouraged by “open discussion, to create an atmosphere where there is a possibility of an ‘aha’ moment that can happen on both sides of the table.”

COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH FOR HEALTH

Community involvement in research exists as a continuum, noted Amy Schulz, professor at University of Michigan School of Public Health, spanning key dimensions including shared power and control, responsibility and ownership, active participation, and decision-making influence: See Figure 2-1. Along this continuum, community involvement can range from investigator-driven studies to research that is fully community driven, she said, pointing out that community-engaged research is in the center of the continuum, given the range of ways such research can unfold.

Emphasizing the evolution of her decades-long collaborative efforts with Angela Reyes, executive director and founder of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, Schulz classified their work as employing a community-based participatory research approach, characterized by

• collaborative partnerships between academics and communities in all phases of the research project, including question development;
• emphasis on shared leadership;
• power sharing in the decision-making process;
• power building to address social inequities;
• commitment to translation of research to action;
• long-term commitment to partnerships;
• emphasis on accountability of funding and research institutions to the communities; and
• focus on equity in both partnerships and outcomes.

Schulz and Reyes have collaborated since 1995 on various long-term projects, ultimately founding the Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments (CAPHE) in 2013 to address air quality and health disparities in Detroit. The decades-long evolution of their collaborations, Schulz explained, highlights the importance of long-standing partnerships that transcend specific projects and demonstrate long-term commitment to the community. Most recently, these sustained relationships have spawned the Gordie Howe International Bridge Health Impact Assessment, aiming to measure and mitigate community health impacts of increased diesel truck traffic due to construction of a new international bridge at the Canada

• Community benefits: The partnership resulted in tangible benefits for many Boston neighborhoods, noted Cope, including navigation improvements in the online employment opportunity system, a placement algorithm to ensure equitable job assignments, and expanded grant opportunities for nonprofits to manage the employment program in their own organizations.
• Additional programs and funding: Survey and administrative data analyzed by Northeastern demonstrated that the Boston SYEP is “wildly impactful,” Modestino reported: It improves employment and wage opportunities, increases high school graduation rates and access to college, and reduces involvement with the criminal justice system. This evidence, which was generated before the COVID-19 pandemic, spurred Northeastern and its partners to develop four new tracks of programming⁵ that helped to keep youth employed during the COVID-19 shutdown. Research evidence was also used to justify a $4 million investment from the city to maintain youth employment at pre-pandemic levels and wages, she said.

In terms of the partnership’s value for Northeastern, Modestino explained that she benefited as a researcher through regular interactions with Cope and the insights he provided from his years of experience running the program. The university also benefited through the opportunity to add value to the neighboring community rather than being extractive for purely research purposes, she said. Furthermore, both Northeastern University and the City of Boston benefited from a 2021 Institutional Challenge Grant of $650,000 from the William T. Grant Foundation to provide data and analysis to “build back better” post-COVID-19, across key areas that center the city’s priorities.

To conclude, Modestino and Cope mentioned several main tensions experienced during the partnership, including the need to build staffing capacity in a tight labor market, changes faced during mayoral transitions, differing priorities between academic and municipal stakeholders, and the pressure and scrutiny they continue to face in producing data and insights to shape funding, resource, and logistical decisions.

DISCUSSION

The panelists described how their partnerships evolved over time and how they overcame the challenges they encountered.

Evolution of Research Questions

All the teams noted that the direction and focus of their research evolved through their collaborative work. Wilding and James explained that, based on the information collected during the data walk, their project shifted focus from the lack of interest in broadband to viewing the issue as one of equitable access, particularly in terms of such essential functions as education and telehealth. Schulz and Reyes also stated that community involvement influenced their research, helping to ensure their questions were relevant and beneficial to the community.

Sometimes, Reyes said, “it may be just a question of answering what the community is interested in first, and then going secondarily to the research question that the researcher was interested in. So, it’s a process of negotiation and that equitable relationship, and co-learning.” Modestino added that an annual research agenda-setting practice helped her partnership prioritize research questions that balanced scientific rigor with real-world needs. Cope expanded on Modestino’s observation, noting that research aiming to create or change policy begins with “digging into what’s happening on the ground[, which] leads to an iterative process. As you explore further, both the situation and questions evolve continuously.”

Overcoming Barriers and Challenges

Panelists described four barriers they most frequently encountered in doing engaged research together:

1. Training, coaching, and mentoring: The time-consuming and emotionally draining nature of engaged work necessitates long-term institutional support, noted Modestino. For example, during the C2C program, her most significant unanticipated challenge involved the coaching and mentoring of faculty doing community-engaged work. Reyes and Schulz echoed the need for institutions to provide faculty training and mentoring, and Reyes called attention to the Detroit Urban Research Center’s community-based participatory research training programs,⁶ which create networks of support for both academics and community members. Wilding similarly noted the success of pilot projects in which the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank participated, which built her team’s engaged research skills and increased their comfort level as researchers.
2. Tenure and promotion: Several panelists noted the need to shift tenure and promotion criteria away from traditional metrics, such as

2. peer-reviewed journal publications, to societal impact. A coordinated change across institutions is necessary, Modestino said, to boost the value of community-engaged work when soliciting external letters from other institutions and thus provide researchers the incentives to participate.
3. Financial: Several panelists cited financial barriers to engaged work, including the need for ongoing funding beyond traditional grant cycles. Community partner funding was noted as a specific challenge: “Universities are really only willing to support their researchers, while their policy partners are expected to do this work based on their institutional salaries or their blood, sweat, and tears,” Modestino said, noting the lack of grant-making opportunities that could provide policy partners with financial support equal to the funding received by researchers.
4. “Overresearch”: James described the difficulty of being inundated by researchers approaching the community with research ideas. To overcome this challenge, researchers need to take the community’s experience into account, he said, while the community also has a role to play: “You have to step back and give that researcher some grace as well, to say that ‘I know what your point is. Let me see, as a community, how we can both achieve success together.’”