Community Involvement Can Enhance PBRN Research

The latest issue of Annals of Family Medicine demonstrates how practice-based research networks are engaging community members as advisers in their research efforts.

Kurt Stange, M.D., Ph.D., editor of Annals, applauds this effort to bridge the gap between clinical research and the community's needs. "If primary care researchers, academic health centers, communities and primary care practices can come together around a vision for community- and practice-based participatory research, we can reduce the problem of translating research into practice by translating practice and community life into research," says Stange in his introduction to the January/February issue of Annals.

Stange's comment applies to an article on community-based participatory research, an online-only case report, and a separate editorial on the article and case report.

John Westfall, M.D., M.P.H., of Aurora, Colo., and his co-authors present survey results and analysis in the article "Community-Based Participatory Research in Practice-Based Research Networks." Forty-six of the nation's 65 PBRNs completed the survey.

The researchers took as their starting point the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's request that PBRNs should "document in their proposals that … a mechanism (such as a community advisory board) is in place to solicit advice/feedback from the communities of patients served by the PBRN clinicians." The researchers found that about half of the study's 46 PBRNs involved community members or patients in at least some aspect of research.

A few of the survey responses:

Community participation in PBRN research is "a new frontier," say the researchers, who call their study the first to describe the use of community-based participatory research methods by PBRNs.

"Community members can help generate research ideas, help ground the research in real patient experiences, assist in refining research methods, help interpret findings and assist in local dissemination of results," say the researchers. "We believe that community involvement will enhance PBRN research."

An online-only case report from the High Plains Research Network Community Advisory Council supplements the survey and shows how an advisory committee was developed and what the collaboration has accomplished. "Our (Community Advisory Council) members agreed to participate because they believed the work would benefit their rural community," says the abstract for the case report.

In the same issue of Annals, FPs Ann Macaulay, M.D., of Montreal and Paul Nutting, M.D., M.S.P.H., of Denver wrote the editorial "Moving the Frontiers Forward: Incorporating Community-Based Participatory Research Into Practice-Based Research Networks."

Community-based participatory research does not view community only as a setting or location, say Macaulay and Nutting. "Rather, CBPR recognizes community as a social entity with a sense of identity. Working with rather than in communities, CBPR attempts to strengthen a community's problem-solving capacity through collective engagement in the research process. CBPR in PBRNs will likely support more rapid dissemination of results, not only to clinicians but also to patients and the community at large!"