The heart of community engagement: exploring respect, reflexivity, reciprocity and responsiveness in practice

This workshop centers Elias & Bui’s (2001) guiding principles of community-engaged research (i.e., Respectfulness, Reflexivity, Reciprocity, Responsiveness) to present a case study and engage attendees in a thoughtful reflection of their own community-engaged work. We will present the Healthy Communities, Services, and Lifestyle Project, highlighting the process from planning to implementation of a community-engaged research study to co-create the mission/vision of Pitt’s Healthy Lifestyle Institute. Through this research we have hired, engaged, and trained three graduate students and two community partners as co-researchers. Our workshop will include our community partners’ perspectives to share why they chose to be involved, their experiences, and their dreams for engaged research moving forward. Workshop activities will include reading scenarios and discussing how the principles apply and ask attendees to consider how they can or are applying them in their own work.