Engaging the Community in Clinical Research

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Public trust in clinical research rests on the transparency of research practice and on good communication with stakeholders. Data suggests that the public is increasingly seeking health information and support outside of their physicians via the internet (1), thus clinical researchers must also move towards a proactive stance, and more directly respond in new ways to inform and engage the public. Likewise, though the public responds favorably to community forums that provide health information, it is not established what conditions are optimal for ensuring long-term health literacy, nor do general forums relay how the public correlates the information received with clinical research, or their attitudes towards clinical research in general. Building public participation in the clinical research process is key to maintaining relevancy to the communities it seeks to serve. Lack of responsiveness to community needs will inevitably be reflected by withdraw of publicly funded support, resulting in less innovative research that could measurably benefit the health of the local community. By establishing more opportunities to exchange information, community members and researchers will mutually benefit. The Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR), the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries (HSL), and the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) have combined their strengths in a project that addresses this need for community engagement in clinical research. This purpose of this partnership is to incorporate the local community's expertise and knowledge in several innovative strategies designed to raise the level of literacy, awareness, and participation in clinical health research. The strategies proposed will address the following specific aims: 1) Determine if the addition of social features to a web-based clinical research recruitment site increases public interest in clinical research, and 2) Identify whether community health forums in a public setting are an effective strategy for: a) increasing public clinical and health research literacy, b) increasing public trust in health research, and c) transforming community members into community research leaders. Responding to recent changes in how the public obtains health information, this project will use interactive clinical health forums and the addition of social networking and information relay features (utilizing the most recent version of the Internet, Web 2.0) to the University of Michigan's current clinical research web portal Engage (www.umengage.org) to speed the exchange of health information. We anticipate this increase in information exchange will lead to greater transparency and benefit community-researcher relationships. Through the balance of technology, science, and community, we aim to establish a strong public interest and trust in clinical research as a result of this project.