If your centre brings together people who are addressing the needs of a population e.g. patients or people with lived-experience, then you need to plan how you will actively engage with them.
For us, this meant that we needed to engage with people with lived experience of cancer. However, you will notice that if you simply open your doors or hold events for your communities you will only get engagement from those with the time, resources and privileged characteristics that enable them to engage. This isn’t good enough.
How do you do better?
Building an authentic community engagement plan
The best community engagement plan is co-created by the communities you want to engage with. To be inclusive means being actively inclusive and making a conscious effort to engage those who normally find it more difficult to engage in research. To do this we partnered with theSussex Research Engagement Network. The national Research Engagement Network (REN) Development Programme was launched in 2022 and jointly funded by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care. It has funded Integrated Care Systems to grow their local research engagement networks by working with local voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector organisations to engage “underserved” communities. If your institution has a Research Engagement Network do consider working with them to authentically engage with diverse communities across your centre.
The power of community researchers
Community Researchers are a core part of the Sussex REN model. They are local people with strong community connections who bring lived experience, cultural knowledge, and insight into health and care research.
Tailored training provided by the REN partnership ensures Community Researchers have the skills needed to support qualitative and community-based research. Their involvement helps ensure research in Sussex is inclusive and reflects the needs and priorities of communities that are often underserved.\
We co-designed our community engagement strategy with community researchers and members of diverse communities across Sussex. Not only did this create a more authentic and actionable community engagement plan but it built a base of diverse and engaged individuals who were stakeholders in your centre and will support you to succeed, as long as you keep them informed and engaged.
The research engagement plan we developed is useful for all centres, not just those looking at cancer across Sussex. We hope our engagement plan could help your centre engage with diverse communities in your centre too.
