Pediatric Research Optimizing Methods in Stakeholder Engagement (PROMISE)

Nemours Children'S Hospital, Delaware, Wilmington DE

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY The Pediatric Research Optimizing Methods In Stakeholder Engagement (PROMISE) Core will support Research Expanding Access to Child Health (REACH) COBRE investigations by fostering engagement of communities and investigators as equal co-participants throughout the research process. Communities are powerful and essential partners in effective, comprehensive transformation of pediatric care. Community stakeholders possess a valuable and often rich appreciation of the multilevel, complex factors that undermine health and complicate health care for children and families. Community-engaged research holds the potential to address these problems in health and health care, yet few investigators pursue partnerships and community participation because of a lack of training and perceived barriers including the time commitment and difficulty generating empirical publications from such research. The PROMISE Core will support investigators in taking a community-based, participatory approach in their research and address the barriers that dissuade investigators, especially early career investigators, from engaging in this approach. Specifically, the PROMISE Core will establish an institutional infrastructure that prepares investigators by: a) training them in community-engaged research frameworks, b) forming and facilitating ongoing project work groups for specific investigators and relevant community stakeholders, c) providing ongoing technical assistance/consultation, and d) maintaining a data repository to support investigators in expediently generating rigorous evidence in response to community-priority questions. This institutional infrastructure will apply a framework for the successful engagement of community stakeholders and investigators in a process of equal participation in all aspects of the research process, including co-construction, co-execution, and shared interpretation and dissemination of findings. The PROMISE Core aims to: 1) create a dynamic, responsive infrastructure to support investigators in their pursuit of conducting stakeholder-engaged intervention-focused research to address pediatric health problems, 2) prepare and support investigators in participating in stakeholder-engaged research and producing, translating, and utilizing scientific knowledge to improve community health, and (3) manage and sustain these resources to broadly support community-engaged research to address health issues. Dr. J. J. Cutuli will direct the PROMISE Core, supported by a core Internal Advisory Committee, the REACH Stakeholder Advisory Committee and the existing Delaware Clinical and Translational Research ACCEL Program Community Engagement and Outreach Core Community Advisory Council. The PROMISE Core will bring community expertise to bear on research into issues of pediatric health and health care, enabling the REACH Center to achieve its overall goals of developing, evaluating, and implementing new interventions and models of care to overcome the complex factors that contribute to pediatric health difficulties.