The Use of Trusted Messengers to Conduct Qualitative Research: A Community Health Improvement Plan Case Study in Worcester, MA

By adopting the trusted messenger model, community members have played a critical role in assisting the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester (CHGW) and the Worcester Department of Public Health (WDPH) collect qualitative data that is used to inform the development of the Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIP) in the City of Worcester, Massachusetts. Trusted messengers have been instrumental in helping us access some of the most marginalized populations in the county, particularly those who are heavily impacted by structural racism, sexism, and classism. Trusted messengers have been very successful at: getting these populations to open up much more, enabling us to collect richer qualitative data, enhancing our understanding of priority health issues for community members and fostering deeper community engagement and ownership of the CHIPs. In this paper we discuss how we worked with trusted messengers to collect data for the 2021 CHIP.