How Duke is Removing Barriers to Community-Engaged Research

Duke partners with purpose. It’s a key dimension of President Price’s strategic vision, and the new Center for Community Engagement is among the latest efforts to foster meaningful and sustainable relationships with our neighbors. But when it comes to carrying out community-engaged research, some processes aren’t straightforward.

Since last spring, an institutional effort dubbed PERC — Partnering for Effective Research Collaborations — has been identifying and addressing administrative barriers to community-engaged research and scholarship. Duke’s assistant vice president for research, Rebecca Brouwer, shares an update on behalf of the PERC team regarding three particularly sticky issues.

The Biggest Challenge: Payments to Partners

How can we compensate our community partners without spending tons of time figuring out the process?

Duke researchers value their relationships with community partners, and the university is able to compensate agencies and individuals for their efforts. So far, so good, right? The problem, Brouwer says, is a complicated process that’s difficult to understand and can take far too long to complete.

“A partner might be with one of our local churches, and they’re dedicating some time to working with the research team,” she offers as an example. “Or we have community members that sit on community advisory boards. [The process of paying them] feels like it should be straightforward, but it’s just incredibly opaque.”

Duke staff, often with years of experience, had to dig through various policies, clicking around and piecing together bits of information from different sources, which proves to be incredibly frustrating.

The working group on compensation is streamlining the process and creating comprehensive guidance. “The team has made a lot of headway,” Brouwer says. “They’re going around Duke and making sure Finance is OK with this, and Research Administration is OK. Let’s get everybody to agree on the guidance, make it clear and digestible, and then we’ll get it out for the public.”

Another Big Challenge: IRB Training for Partners

Do community partners truly need to spend several hours on trainings as part of a research project’s approval process?

“The complaint we had heard is that the community partners felt like the training they had to go through to be a part of a project that needed IRB [Institutional Review Board] oversight outstripped their participation,” Brouwer says.

Partners had been slogging their way through 13 modules that had to do with topics like medical devices, biologics and technology, regardless of relevance to the partner’s role. For people not familiar with research, it can take up to five hours to complete the training.

“Our working group went to the IRB and proposed a set of modules that are focused on the general principles of ethical behavior, informed consent and things that would be true of any of our community-engaged research,” Brouwer notes.

“In partnership with the IRB, we’re getting ready to roll out revised instructions for researchers working with community partners — the training should take no more than an hour. It’s much more reasonable.”

Another point of clarification is that some community partners don’t need to do any training. “You really have to think about the definition of what it means to be engaged in research, and there’s a very specific definition” Brouwer points out. “Many of our community partners actually don’t meet that definition.”

It’s a two-pronged issue, she concludes. “We’re trying to be very, very clear about who needs training at all, and if they do need training, we’re going to rely upon a much more appropriate set of modules.”

Yet Another Challenge: Transportation Between Campus and Research Sites

What are the best options for getting people where they need to go in order to participate in community-engaged research?

“The other big issue that we’re really struggling with is transportation,” Brouwer says. Undergraduates without cars may need to reach a location in the community, or a Durham resident may want to come to Duke to take part in a research study.

“We have a limited and fairly expensive arrangement with Lyft, and we have some public transit but it doesn’t often work very well in terms of the timing and the locations,” Brouwer notes. “There are all these different things that we’re trying to figure out how to solve… There are so many obstacles, especially in the liability space.”

While the team is still uncovering and tackling sticky issues, there have been successes for the PERC team and its central office partners. In addition to the solution for IRB training, they are working on providing more guidance to smooth the IRB submission and review process for community-engaged research projects. They have helped streamline Spanish-language translation requirements for some required documents. Finally, there are several guidance documents in the final stages of review that should help researchers through processes like figuring out when and how to compensate community members participating in research for childcare expenses.

These challenges are not unique to Duke. The PERC team spoke with several peer institutions, and all are clamoring to learn from Duke’s efforts. With any luck, PERC can clear a path for our own researchers and teams and share our solutions so it can help others.

Behind the Scenes

• 15-member working group and 5 senior institutional leaders from across Duke (Duke Community Affairs, Office for Research & Innovation, School of Medicine, Duke Cancer Institute, Office of the Provost and more)
• 40+ interviews conducted with Duke researchers and community partners
• 200+ administrative barriers identified; approximately 65% related to fiscal issues

Learn More and Get in Touch

• Track the initiative’s progress through updates on the PERC website.
• Fill out an online form to raise questions, share comments or contact the PERC team.