MyAlliance for Brain Health for Research Recruitment: Evaluation of Community Partnership Experiences Using a Mixed-Methods Approach

Establishing partnerships with trusted community organizations is a well-established strategy to reach communities underrepresented in medical research. Community organizations are trusted sources of information and services, with the potential to improve research readiness within communities. Literature suggests that research participation is facilitated by initial practices such as relationship- building, inclusive design, and accessibility, which ultimately lead to a sense of openness and trust among community members. However, the value of collaborative efforts between partnering organizations can be difficult to measure and evaluate. Following a community-engaged research recruitment project, MyAlliance for Brain Health, we evaluated how organizational stakeholders perceived community-academic research partnerships established during the grant period using a mixed-methods approach. Qualitative data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with six different organizational and program leaders, and quantitative data was collected through a short community-partner survey aimed at measuring actual vs. preferred engagement. Interview findings indicated that in general, organizational and program leaders appeared to place more emphasis on the value of partnering relationships than they did on perceived challenges. Survey data supported this finding, revealing that the actual level of engagement across different grant activities was similar to what community partners would like to see going forward. Interview data also revealed that organizations shared more common successes than they shared common challenges, suggesting that challenges were mostly unique to specific community organizations. Our findings support community engagement models that value sustained relationships as a path towards readiness to engage with dementia research.