Centering communities in policy implementation research: considerations for the integration of community-based...

Community-engaged dissemination and implementation research focuses on the implementation of evidence-based interventions within clinical or community-based settings. It uses community-engaged processes or partnerships. This includes (but is not limited to) community-based participatory research (CBPR). CBPR is an approach that centers actively engaging and collaboratively sharing power with community members, which can increase the value of studies for the communities being served and researchers. Community members include those who are most affected by the research (e.g. patients, citizens) and those most invested in the communities being researched (e.g. advocates, leaders).

Policy implementation research is the subfield of implementation science that aims to understand how policies are implemented and improve their implementation. Previous literature discusses policy co-design, defined as actively partnering with community members in the policy making process. In this article, we suggest ways to integrate CBPR methods within policy implementation research as well. We specifically discuss ways that community-members can be actively and substantively engaged in policy implementation in addition to policy making.

Policy implementation research researchers who wish to approach their work through a CBPR lens would benefit from our overarching recommendation to meaningfully engage community members throughout the policy implementation research process including (i) building or maintaining meaningful partnerships, (ii) engaging in transparent and equitable resource sharing, cost charging, compensation, and incentives. (iii) co-designing/co-conceptualizing projects, (iv) co-refining the project and co-selecting strategies for project completion, (v) bi-directional learning and open channels of communication during the project period, and (vi) taking action on harmful or inequitable policy implementation research and results of research. We argue that if policies are causing harm or not reaching marginalized communities, researchers should alert policymakers, frontline staff, and community members to this information and actively assist in providing solutions to this issue. Ideally, the steps outlined in this article will enable researchers to directly uncover the presence of harm and/or lack of reach of policies and form the communication channels that would enable researchers to inform policymakers and community members.