Engaging Underrepresented Communities in Health Research: Lessons Learned

Members of marginalized communities experience health disparities or inequities and are underrepresented in health research. Community engagement in research is a catalyst for researchers to address health disparities while prioritizing community needs and strengthening community capacity. There is limited knowledge on how to engage underrepresented communities throughout the research process, particularly on initiating a partnership and planning research with a community. The purpose of this reflection piece is to share individual cases of research engagement within four communities: immigrant postpartum women, rural residents engaged in farming, low literate and non-English speaking adults, and individuals with intellectual disabilities in the United States. In each case, we explain how we initiated partnerships with the communities, continued to integrate community feedback to guide research questions, and implemented tailored methodologies. Finally, we discuss commonalities and differences in approaches used, tailoring within, and lessons learned when working with these diverse, underrepresented communities during the research process.