Building and Sustaining Community Engagement to Advance School Behavioral Health Research

The promise of achieving desired outcomes in community-engaged research relies upon an ongoing and long-term connection between the community and researchers. However, many community-researcher relationships begin and end in the confines of a single project, often precluding the sustainability and scalability of programs and initiatives that can benefit the community. Few examples exist in the literature, especially for the focus of this paper-school behavioral health (SBH)-to understand how the complex, challenging, and nuanced process of continued engagement between researchers and community members can be sustained and succeed. In this article, we chronicle the development of the Southeastern School Behavioral Health Community across 13 years, from its inception in a single state to its regional expansion through two research awards, to illustrate how long-term community engagement and a history of community connections can shape SBH research and practice across project action cycles. We describe the strengths, challenges, and lessons learned from this long-term community engagement experience. Numerous examples illustrate proactive and responsive strategies for initiating and sustaining community engagement throughout all phases of the longitudinal initiative and demonstrate tangible ways in which meaningful engagement influenced both research and practice. The reflections include the extent to which engagement principles of the research funder (the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, PCORI) were enacted during this research program; our roles as researchers, facilitators, and community members; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; engagement facilitators and structures; and what was achieved regarding levels of engagement. Future directions are provided for sustaining interconnected, community-engaged research and practice in SBH.