Beyond incentives for involvement to compensation for consultants: increasing equity in CBPR approaches.
BACKGROUND
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) strives for equitable collaboration among community and academic partners throughout the research process. To build the capacity of academia to function as effective research partners with communities, the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS), home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH)'s Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA), developed a community engagement consulting model. This new model harnesses the expertise of community partners with CBPR experience and compensates them equitably to provide technical assistance to community-academic research partnerships.


OBJECTIVE
This paper describes approaches to valuing community expertise, the importance of equitable compensation for community partners, the impact on the community partners, opportunities for institutional change, and the constraints faced in model implementation.


METHODS
Community Experts (CEs) are independent contractor consultants. CEs were interviewed to evaluate their satisfaction with their engagement and compensation for their work.


CONCLUSIONS
(1) CEs have knowledge, power, and credibility to push for systems change. (2) Changes were needed within the university to facilitate successful consultation to community-academic partnerships. (3) Sustaining the CE role requires staff support, continued compensation, increased opportunities for engagement, and careful consideration of position demands. (4) The role provides benefits beyond financial compensation. (5) Opportunities to gather deepened relationships within the partnership and built collective knowledge that strengthened the project.


CONCLUSIONS
Leveraging CE expertise and compensating them for their role benefits both university and community. Creating a place for community expertise within academia is an important step toward equitably including the community in research.
Kristin Z
KZ
Black
Christina Yongue
CY
Hardy
Molly
M
De Marco
Alice S
AS
Ammerman
Giselle
G
Corbie-Smith
Barbara
B
Council
Danny
D
Ellis
Eugenia
E
Eng
Barbara
B
Harris
Melvin
M
Jackson
Jimmy
J
Jean-Baptiste
William
W
Kearney
Mac
M
Legerton
Donald
D
Parker
Mysha
M
Wynn
Alexandra
A
Lightfoot
D057191:Capacity Building; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D035881:Compensation and Redress; D003253:Consultants; D003284:Contract Services / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D009657:North Carolina; D012380:Role