Abstract: Community Engagement to Reduce Health Disparities: Examining the Tactics Used by Practitioners to Engage Underserved Communities

◆ Taylor Goulbourne, Rutgers University

Community engagement is increasingly recognized as an effective strategy for closing many health disparities (Cyril et al., 2015). In addition, there is broad consensus that effective communication is critical to closing existing gaps in engaging ‘hard-to-reach’ populations (Dempsey et al., 2011; World Health Organization, 2020). At the same time, existing evidence shows that underserved populations are not adequately approached or effectively engaged in efforts taken by service providers and health interventionists to improve their health (Altschuler et al., 2004; Haldane et al., 2019). This is partly because health interventionists tend to use community engagement approaches that have worked among privileged or non-disadvantaged populations but are not adequately adapted to underserved groups’ unique needs and circumstances (Wallerstein & Duran, 2010). In addition, while prominent community engagement models and frameworks prescribe critical principles of effective community engagement, these models are fundamentally mute about the role of communication in this context. From an interdisciplinary integrative review of the literature, three community engagement strategies were identified and applied to organize communication tactics frequently used in community engagement research. These include transactional, transitional, and transformational community engagement strategies, which vary according to a community and organization’s degree of readiness to engage. Nonetheless, much of the existing community engagement literature still has not systematically been connected to communication research and relies heavily on the methods and routines of researchers, and not practitioners of community-based organizations (CBO) who play a central role in assessing community needs and responding to community health-related challenges (Griffith et al., 2010). Therefore, there is a significant opportunity to advance current community engagement scholarship and practice by centering communication in all community engagement processes and facilitating the flow of practitioner knowledge to research by learning from the perspective and experience of practitioners regarding the challenge of engaging socially and economically disadvantaged communities. Therefore, a significant motivation of this study is to integrate interdisciplinary conceptions of community engagement research with the best-practices and routines of CBOs who regularly and effectively engage underserved communities via the following research questions: RQ1: How do CBOs decide how to engage underserved communities? RQ2: What communication tactics do CBOs use to engage underserved communities? To answer these questions, semi-structured in-depth interviews are being conducted with two representatives (community outreach professionals and advisory board members; N = 32) from 16 CBOs that primarily serve underserved communities in a health and wellness context. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed using a nascent conceptual model of community engagement. Complete results will be available for presentation at KCHC. Findings from this study will enrich health communication and community engagement research by connecting communication scholarship with existing community engagement approaches and frameworks and integrating practitioner knowledge with the community engagement literature. In addition, this study's practical implications include better informing how researchers and practitioners determine how best to engage underserved communities by describing the conditions and circumstances most suitable for particular community engagement tactics, and, thus, enhancing the overall efficacy of efforts seeking to address community health-related challenges and persistent public health disparities.