A Community Advisory Board Model to Strengthen Community-Academic Partnerships in Stroke Research

Community advisory boards (CABs) can improve the relevance and impact of research. CABs often guide timebound research projects or inform strategy at large institutions. By contrast, we developed a CAB for collaborative neurorehabilitation research as an arm of a research laboratory. Community members (e.g., stroke survivors, care partners, therapists) engage in research and community initiatives around a shared vision. Existing CAB literature and implementation resources primarily describe project and institutional CABs, with less evidence of alternative CAB models. Therefore, this article describes the development of an ongoing CAB partnership and the evaluation of community member engagement over time. Two years after establishing the NPNL Stroke Advisory Board, we describe the Board's activities, evaluation process, and early successes and challenges with the intention of promoting transparency of community-engaged approaches and empower similar partnerships to form.