Abstract
Community advisory boards (CABs) can improve the relevance and impact of research. CABs often guide timebound research projects or inform strategy at large institutions. By contrast, we developed a CAB for collaborative neurorehabilitation research as an arm of a research laboratory. Community members (e.g., stroke survivors, care partners, therapists) engage in research and community initiatives around a shared vision. Existing CAB literature and implementation resources primarily describe project and institutional CABs, with less evidence of alternative CAB models. Therefore, this article describes the development of an ongoing CAB partnership and the evaluation of community member engagement over time. Two years after establishing the NPNL Stroke Advisory Board, we describe the Board’s activities, evaluation process, and early successes and challenges with the intention of promoting transparency of community-engaged approaches and empower similar partnerships to form.
Plain Language Summary
Community advisory boards (CABs) help make research more relevant and impactful by involving people from the community. Often, CABs give input on a specific research project or help shape big-picture research goals at large institutions. We took a different approach by creating a long-term CAB as part of a research laboratory focused on stroke recovery. Our board includes stroke survivors, care partners, and therapists who work alongside researchers to shape both research studies and community activities. Most existing guidance on CABs focuses on project or institutional CABs, so in this paper, we share how we created our board, how we assess how well we work together, and what we have learned so far. Two years in, we have seen many benefits from including community members as partners in the research process. By sharing our process, activities, and lessons learned, we hope to encourage others to build similar partnerships.
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