Community consultation and public disclosure: preliminary results from a new model

Emergency medicine research conducted under the exception from informed consent (EFIC) regulation enables critical scientific advancements. When EFIC is proposed, there is a requirement for broad community consultation and public disclosure (CC/PD) regarding the risks and benefits of the study. At the present time, no clear guidelines or standards exist for conducting and evaluating the CC/PD. This preliminary study tested the feasibility and acceptability of a new approach to CC/PD for a large-scale EFIC trial by engaging community members in designing and conducting the strategies. The authors enrolled key community members (called community advocates for research, or CARs) to use community-based participatory methods to design and implement CC/PD. By partnering with community members who represent target populations for the research study, this new approach has demonstrated a feasible CC/PD plan with greater community participation and less cost than previous studies. In a community survey, the percentage of community members reporting having heard about the EFIC trial more than doubled after employing the new approach. This article discusses initial implementation and results.