Evaluating the Translation of Research Evidence Into Practice and Policy for Behavioral Health Equity

The Transdisciplinary Research, Equity and Engagement (TREE) Center for Advancing Behavioral Health partners with community leaders to translate research evidence into practice and policy for behavioral health equity. Equity-oriented research centers such as the TREE Center present evaluation challenges and, correspondingly, offer rich opportunities for enhancing understandings of both effective evaluation strategies and the multi-dimensional impacts of complexity-oriented research centers. As part of an embedded, participatory evaluation process to advance impact, three TREE Center partner surveys were conducted in 2019-2020 to evaluate progress toward achieving Center co-leadership, knowledge integration, workforce development, and co-dissemination aims. All surveys contained Center-designed measures of progress toward aims alongside externally validated scales. Aggregate response rate across the three surveys exceeded 50% (122/228). Concordant with the Center's Co-leadership, pluralities of survey respondents were Hispanic/Latinx (40-59%), and American Indian or Alaska Native (20-22%). Reflecting increases from baseline, a majority of academic partner follow up survey respondents reported "high, sustained progress" toward each Center aim with survey means exceeding national benchmarks on 13 of 14 externally validated measures of community engaged research processes and outcomes, including policy impact, community integration into research, and social transformation measures. Overall, evaluation survey results supported broad progress toward both authentic engagement and the co-production of community benefit and affirm, while complex to implement and sustain, publicly funded research Centers supporting community engagement in team science, grounded in genuine concordance, can play a vital role in advancing health and health policy with equity.