Planning research in partnership with communities opens the door to meaningful insights and real-world impact — but it also requires careful thought, collaboration, and cultural understanding from the start.
That’s where CHAT Sessions come in. They’re one of several resources from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) designed to help researchers meaningfully connect with the communities they aim to benefit, while giving communities a voice in research.
Each CHAT Session is a professionally facilitated conversation that arms researchers with valuable community perspectives to enhance their study idea or protocol. CTSI’s community engagement team, CEARCH, plans and manages these sessions, and the Somali, Latino, Hmong Partnership for Health and Wellness — known as SoLaHmo — is the primary facilitator.
Fostering community connections
CHAT Sessions are useful to any health researcher, regardless of their particular field of study.
Two such researchers include Monica Campo, MD, MPH, and Sommer Amundsen-Huffmaster, PhD, both Assistant Professors at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School.
“CHAT Sessions helped us begin to create long-term partnerships with different communities,” says Dr. Campo, whose research aims to understand why some people get respiratory infections while others do not, with the goal of improving prevention and treatment. “Sessions also empowered folks to participate in research at different levels and helped lead people who were interested to participate in our studies.”
“Our group used the CHAT Sessions to look at community access to clinical care and research,” says Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster. “We were really interested in why people with Parkinson’s disease weren’t seeing movement disorder neurologists or accessing deep brain stimulation as part of their care.”
Researchers can also use CHAT Sessions at any point in the study process — such as to formulate a research question of interest to the community, find culturally appropriate ways to conduct their research, discover how to best share their research with community members, and more. They’re a great way to gather insights into items such as policies, procedures, plans, strategies, products, and tools.
A deeper cultural understanding
Both researchers emerged from CHAT Sessions with a better understanding of the cultures of their communities of interest.
“We have learned a lot about how communities prefer to gather info,” says Dr. Campo. “And learning what sort of taboos exist regarding the issue that we are studying has been very helpful.”
“We came away from our CHAT Session with a lot of hope,” Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster adds. “By the time we finished the session, I felt like we had a lot of direct suggestions from the participants on how we could move forward. Instead of having this nebulous feeling, we now had contacts within these communities giving us really clear, concrete suggestions and ideas.”
CHAT Sessions also offer meaningful benefits to the community members who participate as panelists. By sharing their experiences with researchers, individuals impacted by a specific health issue have the opportunity to shape studies that directly relate to their lives — and ensure that research reflects what truly matters to the people it’s meant to serve.
Moving projects forward
With help from CHAT Sessions that were highly tailored to the needs, questions, and goals of their individual projects and teams, both Dr. Campo and Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster have been able to move their projects forward in significant ways.
“We have been able to tailor our recruitment materials in very specific ways,” says Dr. Campo. “We also have more connections with community-based organizations and clinics, greatly expanding our network of outreach.”
CHAT Sessions played a pivotal role in helping Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster build lasting relationships, too. Results from her CHAT Session are influencing new outreach strategies for Parkinson’s care and research. Additionally, when starting a new Parkinson’s advocacy board, community panelists from her CHAT Session were among the first people she reached out to.
“We’ve started an advocacy board inside the research team studying Parkinson’s, which will help us do a number of things in the future,” says Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster. “This board of patients and care partners from the community will help us identify problems in access to care, help recruit participants and gather their feedback, as well as help us design research studies that actually focus on patient needs and interests.”
“The process is so valuable”
Drs. Campo and Amundsen-Huffmaster encourage other research scientists to utilize the CHAT Sessions, an offering led by CTSI’s community engagement team, CEARCH.
“The CEARCH experience overall is really great,” says Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster. “The trained facilitators are fantastic, and in the end, you get this beautiful report to take back to your team that has a lot of concrete ways to further your project. It’s an invaluable resource.”
By design, CHAT Sessions are as easy as possible for the researcher — small time commitment, no IRB approval needed, and dedicated support along the way. Sessions are tailored to meet the needs of researchers and their specific project, but they don’t have to worry about planning or facilitating the conversation.
“It’s a high-yield way to get closer to the community you’re studying and get a sense of the dynamics in those communities,” adds Dr. Campo. “You get to see what is important for them.”
“One of the best things you can do is contact the CEARCH team and just start working with them,” says Dr. Amundsen-Huffmaster. “The process is so valuable.”
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