Community Engagement and Community-Based Participatory Research, Part 1 of 3

>> Tiffany Powell Wiley: Hello, my name is Dr. Tiffany Powell-Wiley, and I'm Chief of the Social Determinants of Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk Laboratory at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Today I'll be talking about community engagement, and community based participatory research. And this is part one of a three-part series. As far as an outline for today,

the first I'll discuss the role of community engagement to address conditions impacted by social determinants of health. I'll then go into the continuum of community engagement and the differences between community engagement and patient engagement. I'll then talk about the role of community engagement for improving the diversity of clinical trials. And finally, I'll talk about the types of interventions

that can happen at multiple levels and that can incorporate community engagement to promote health equity. Community engagement is critical in addressing complex chronic diseases, particularly those that are intersectional and act synergistically. And we can consider obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease to be these types of diseases. All of these diseases work together and are impacted by social determinants of health,

like economic disadvantage, environmental factors, and psychosocial stressors. And community engagement can help to understand biological pathways that connect social factors to chronic diseases. For instance, community engagement provides an opportunity to understand stressors that have the most impact in the daily lives of community members. And the trust built through community engagement allows for detailed examination of health factors

that are influenced by these stressors. Ultimately, the goal is to build solutions that are not only to understand what is happening in the communities but also to address the health needs within communities. We can define a community based on geography, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, health condition, or a combination of any of these factors.