Mayo Clinic Framework for Community-Engaged Research: Development, Implementation, and Impact

Mayo Clinic addresses community health needs by integrating community expertise and collaboratively identifying and responding to community health priorities. Community-engaged research (CEnR), encompassing a continuum of engagement from raising awareness to co-ownership of research efforts, helps operationalize this commitment. Mayo Clinic's CEnR efforts are guided by principles that emphasize community context, sustained partnerships, integration of community perspectives across the research process, and evaluation of community-centered outcomes. The CEnR Program at Mayo Clinic is coordinated through the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS), an enterprise-wide hub supporting education, career development, and translational research. It is also implemented in collaboration with Community Outreach and Engagement Research Services (COERS), a shared resource coordinated by the CCaTS and the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. The CCaTS supports CEnR through community advisory boards, community health needs assessments, and an awards program; COERS advances engagement through Community Engagement Studios, a Community Scientist Program, and related outreach activities. In 2023-2024, we devised and refined a strategic framework for CEnR, bringing together a multidisciplinary group of academic and community partners and informed by a multisite evaluation. The evaluation identified key facilitators of and barriers to academic-community partnerships and generated actionable recommendations. These efforts culminated in the Mayo Clinic CEnR logic model, integrating national guidelines, institutional commitments, and evaluation findings. This logic model serves as a framework for current and future CEnR initiatives within Mayo Clinic and may inform similar efforts nationally. We describe the key elements required to establish and sustain a cross-location CEnR program within a values-based health care institution.