Community Engagement Campaign
The goal of Augusta University’s Community Engagement campaign seeks to engage the community in meaningful conversations regarding human subject research at Augusta University and establish a collaborative relationship with the citizens we serve.
Research study populations should mirror the characteristics of our surrounding community. However, due to persistent health disparities, which often stem from a lack of trust, inclusion within study populations is not always reflective of the actual community. Research studies that are not appropriately inclusive undermine the confidence of the research results.
To coincide with ensuring the adequate and fair representation of all groups in research, our IRB office wished to take steps to begin a process that was long overdue. Within our organization, we first formed a community engagement steering community (CESC) that would help steer our outreach and engagement efforts in the community. The CESC included members of the community that ranged from IRB community members, social workers, nurses, lawyers, students, and members of the golden harvest food bank. We wanted a wide range of individuals who actively represented the community and knew where we needed to focus our efforts.
We also begin community outreach efforts - "Boots on the Ground". The efforts included community educational forums, where we focused on listening to the communities and taking back suggestions on how to improve our participant outreach and representation. We also wanted to provide them with needed education and tools. Outreach efforts also included research symposiums focused on Health literacy and representation of our IRB office at community health fairs, and research days, to again engage with and learn from the community.
We will perform internal reviews of policies and IRB composition to ensure we have membership of varied backgrounds and review of implicant barriers to recruitment. We will continue to partner with Community Based Researchers to collaborate and serve as a liaison between investigators and the community.
Tiffany Coleman, MS, MPH, CIP
Ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion has long been a passion of mine. With my medical background in Sleep Medicine, I often saw racial disparities in health outcomes when comparing groups. Within my current field of research, disparities are still evident with respect to diversity of the research population. My goal with this initiative is to build a collaborative partnership with the citizens we serve and begin the conversations that will hopefully lead to substantial action to decrease these inequalities.
Melissa Toomer, CIC
As a Latina working in the IRB Office, I have come across several studies that lack representation from the Latino community. My hope is to bridge the gap between the community and researchers to make research accessible for those who may need it the most.
Bianca Marsh, BA
Asia Bonham, BS
The basic principles of the Belmont Report charge IRBs with ensuring the rights and well-being of the human participants are protected. This includes ensuring the adequate and fair representation of all groups in research to ensure benefits and results are spread equally throughout the population. To ensure adequate and fair representation of underrepresented groups, we also need to ensure we have IRB membership of varied backgrounds. We have performed the first phases of our membership assessments of our IRB. View the initial results.
Assessments of IRB Membership diversity will be assessed annually by our team.
Research Symposium / Health Literacy Training
Augusta University’s Community Engagement initiative also aims to collaborate with researchers to serve as a liaison between investigators and the community by:
Pre-Study, On-Study and Post Study Considerations: Procedural and Logistical Checklist
Barriers to Participant Recruitment and Retention; Beyond the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The purpose of this study is to discuss challenges and strategies with recruiting research populations that mirror the community. We will also administer a pre and post survey to measure the focus group's knowledge of recruitment and retention in research before and after the focus group session.
Barriers to Participant Recruitment and Retention; A Researcher’s Prospective
The purpose of this study is to survey researchers to explore the issues they may be having with recruiting research populations that mirror the community. As a second phase, we wish to engage researchers via a focus group to discuss challenges and strategies the researchers may face with recruiting and retention.
