Recommendations and best practices for community advisory boards in health-related research studies: A scoping review protocol

Introduction Community advisory boards (CABs) are structured groups of community representatives who work together with researchers with the shared goal of improving the contextual, cultural, and ethical relevance of a study. By integrating the diverse perspectives and insider positionality of its members throughout a study, including in design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation, CABs are a key method of engaging communities in the research that affects them. Despite the increasing adoption of CABs across clinical, health services, public health, and policy research, there remains limited clarity on how they should be most effectively implemented. Existing guidance on CABs’ specific structure and composition, roles and responsibilities, decision-making processes, and logistical considerations has remained fragmented and inconsistently applied across studies. To inform more effective and meaningful use of CABs, this scoping review aims to systematically map recommendations and best practices for the use of CABs in health-related research studies. Methods and analysis We will follow Akrsey and O’Malley’s framework for scoping reviews and will report the results of this review in accordance with the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews. We will search MEDLINE via PubMed and relevant grey literature sources, as well as solicit recommendations from experts in community engagement to identify English-language articles published since 2010 that detail recommendations and best practices for CABs in the context of health-related research studies. Two independent reviewers will screen identified articles at title and abstract level, followed by full-text screening. A third reviewer will resolve any conflicts in inclusion decisions. We will extract data on recommendations for CABs’ composition, roles and responsibilities, decision-making processes, and logistical operations. We will then synthesize the data narratively to identify areas of consensus and variation in the guidance provided. Ethics and dissemination As we will be searching and synthesizing publicly available literature, this review does not require ethical approval. We will submit our findings in a peer-reviewed journal and present them at relevant conferences.