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Community Engagement in Behavioral Medicine: A Scoping Review

  • Special Issue: Meta-Analyses and Reviews
  • Published:
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Abstract

Background

Behavioral medicine has made key contributions toward improving health outcomes. Engaging community partners in research is critical to addressing persistent health inequities. The aim of this scoping review was to explore how researchers engaged community partners within the field of behavioral medicine research from 2005 to 2023.

Method

Publication databases and gray literature were searched for research that engaged community partners to address questions relevant to behavioral medicine. Articles were screened by title and abstract, and then by full text. Articles meeting the inclusion criteria were coded using the framework provided by the Engagement Navigator to identify engagement approaches, methods, and tools and when they were used during the research.

Results

Of 1486 articles initially identified, 58 met the inclusion criteria. Most articles used well-known approaches (e.g., community-based participatory research; 67%), methods (e.g., advisory committees; 59%), and tools (e.g., interviews; 41%), and engaged with healthcare service providers (62%) and/or patients (53%). Community partners were most often included in research planning and design (79%), and less often in dissemination (45%).

Conclusion

Community engagement has considerable potential to address health inequities. Our assessment of the approaches, methods, and tools used by behavioral medicine researchers to engage with a diverse range of community partners points toward promising strategies for enhancing the impact of community engagement. Researchers should incorporate explicit descriptions of community engagement strategies in publications, an outcome that could be facilitated by clear publishing guidelines, structured reporting tools, and clear messaging from funders about the value of community engagement in behavioral medicine research.

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Data Availability

Data will be made available upon written request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Cheryl Knott of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland for her support on this scoping review.

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center (P30CA051008; Weiner, PI), by the American Cancer Society (RSG-17-156-01-CPPB), and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (UL1TR003142, UL1TR001873, UL1TR001414).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Graduate Education, Geisinger College of Health Sciences, Scranton, PA, 18509, USA

    Reema Persad-Clem

  2. Center for Applied Research and Evaluation in Women’s Health, Department of Health Services Management and Policy, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, 37614-1700, USA

    Liane M. Ventura

  3. School of Medicine Library, Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, Scranton, PA, 18509, USA

    Tierney Lyons

  4. Charles C. Sherrod Library, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, 37614-1700, USA

    Christiana Keinath

  5. Cancer Prevention and Control Program, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20007, USA

    Kristi D. Graves

  6. Department of Population Health and Disease Prevention, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Margaret L. Schneider

  7. Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Rachel C. Shelton

  8. Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Office of Community Engagement, Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, 94304-1210, USA

    Lisa G. Rosas

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Correspondence to Lisa G. Rosas.

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Persad-Clem, R., Ventura, L.M., Lyons, T. et al. Community Engagement in Behavioral Medicine: A Scoping Review. Int.J. Behav. Med. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-023-10242-6

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