On May 6, members of Tufts CTSI’s Stakeholder Expert Panel launched Research Results: Stakeholder Conversations, a series of discussions with Principal Investigators (PIs) about their published research. Panel members review journal articles written by researchers affiliated with Tufts CTSI, select the studies most interesting and applicable to them, and then invite the PIs to talk about their work and answer questions.

For the first installment of this program, Panel members invited Carolyn Rubin, EdD, MA to discuss her study, “We Make the Path by Walking it”: Building an Academic Community Partnership with Boston Chinatown (Prog Community Health Partnersh. 2014 Autumn;8(3):353-63). Six Panel members attended the meeting (three in-person; three online via WebEx).

To begin the meeting, Dr. Rubin gave some background about her personal connection to the research (her grandfather immigrated to San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1913), her professional qualifications, the history of Tufts CTSI’s Addressing Disparities in Asian Populations through Translational Research (ADAPT) initiative, and the importance of involving community members in every stage of research.

Panel members then asked questions that resulted in in-depth discussions about the:

  • Impact of ADAPT and why this research matters
  • Likelihood of whether the ADAPT model will succeed in other communities
  • Importance of trust and transparency between academia and community residents and partners
  • Challenges associated with research dissemination, and the Panel’s desire to help mitigate them.

Chien-Chi Huang, MS, Executive Director of Asian Women for Health, Panel member, ADAPT member, and co-author of the study, said, “Trust is built over time, and transparency is important. We need to have open discussions about how to work together and how to align research projects with the organizations’ missions and expectations. We encourage researchers to be open and honest about funding allocation and to focus on equity, recognizing the experience of community members and treating them as equal partners throughout the research process.”

As the meeting was adjourned, Dr. Rubin thanked the Panel for an informative and productive conversation, and the in-person members posed with her for a photo.

Community members, patients and their families, researchers, medical industry representatives, and health care providers are invited to join the Stakeholder Expert Panel to help develop team science program initiatives, improve the participant experience in clinical trials, build relationships between communities and researchers, and advance community-prioritized research projects.