A discussion among deans on advancing community engaged research.

The benefits of community-engaged research (CEnR) have been documented in the literature. However, the adoption of community engaged (CE) and participatory approaches among health researchers remains limited. The Boston University (BU) Clinical Translational Science Institute's community engagement program initiated a discussion among five BU Deans to explore their approaches to support the practice of CEnR among faculty in their schools.

Integrating community engagement with implementation science to advance the measurement of translational science.

This special communication provides an approach for applying implementation science frameworks to a Clinical and Translational Science Institutes (CTSIs) community engagement (CE) program that measures the use of implementation strategies and outcomes that promote the uptake of CE in research. Using an iterative multi-disciplinary group process, we executed a four-phased approach to developing an evaluation plan: 1) creating an model adapted from Proctor's conceptual model of implementation research; 2) mapping implementation strategies to CTSI CE program interventions that support change in research practice; 3) identifying and operationalizing measures for each strategy; and 4) conducting an evaluation. Phase 2 employed 73 implementation strategies across 9 domains generated by the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change project.