Community partner perspectives on community‐academic health research partnerships with Black American communities: A scoping review

Abstract Evaluations of community‐engaged research (CEnR) typically emphasize health outcomes rather than the partnership processes that contribute to intervention effectiveness. This scoping review synthesized community partner‐identified strategies for successful community‐academic health research partnerships with Black American communities and examined their alignment with the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) taxonomy. This preregistered scoping review followed the PRISMA‐ScR guidelines. PsycINFO and PubMed were searched in June 2024 without publication date restrictions. Eligible studies were published in English, involved community partners in health research with Black American communities, and reported community partner perspectives on the partnership. Community partner‐identified strategies were deductively coded using the ERIC taxonomy, with remaining strategies inductively coded. Twenty‐four studies met the inclusion criteria. The most frequently identified ERIC strategies were building coalitions, developing academic partnerships, and conducting educational meetings. Community partners also identified numerous strategies not represented in the ERIC taxonomy. Community partner‐identified strategies translate broad principles of CEnR into actionable partnership practices that can guide health research with Black American communities. Mapping these strategies to the ERIC taxonomy further demonstrates how implementation science can support the operationalization of CEnR while highlighting important relational and equity‐focused strategies that are not fully represented in existing implementation frameworks.