Strategies for high-quality community-based participatory research partnerships in public health research

Objectives: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is grounded in trusting, reciprocal, and authentic relationships. We aimed to identify key strategies and actionable next steps to establish and sustain high-quality community-academic partnerships that foster community-based health equity. Study design: Qualitative thematic analysis. Methods: We analyzed three recorded discussions from a roundtable session with community and academic partners from the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) program (2020-2025), which supported 142 community-engaged public health research projects aimed at reducing COVID-19-related health inequities. Results: Key themes identified as most fundamental to support CBPR included establishing a long-term commitment, mutual co-learning among partners, flexible and sustained funding and resources, co-design of research and evaluation tools, and unwavering commitment to transparent communication and dissemination. Accurately assessing CBPR's impact requires using valid and reliable tools that assess whether community-academic partnerships are functioning well, identify opportunities to strengthen engagement, and measure both community- and system-level outcomes resulting from the partnerships. Conclusions: Advancing community-based health research through high-quality CBPR partnerships requires ongoing flexibility, mutual trust, shared learning, and collaborative design core elements to achieve sustainable and equitable public health outcomes. Through these initiatives we can pave the way for high-quality community-academic partnerships that address critical priorities in population health research and processes for advancing health equity.