Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) embodies an applied definition of community engagement advanced over four decades. The increased demand for community collaboration requires attention to the institutional contexts supporting community-engaged research. MSM partnered with the University of New Mexico Center for Participatory Research for the Engage for Equity (E2) PLUS Project to assess, ideate, and consider existing and recommended institutional supports for community-engaged research.

MSM assembled a community-campus Champion Team. The team coordinated virtual workshops with 18 community and academic research partners, facilitated four interviews of executive leaders and two focus groups (researchers/research staff and patients/community members, respectively) moderated by UNM-CPR. Analyses of the transcripts were conducted using an inductive and deductive process. Once the themes were identified, the qualitative summaries were shared with the Champion Team to verify and discuss implications for action and institutional improvements.

Institutional strengths and opportunities for systemic change were aligned with equity indicators (power and control, decision-making, and influence) and contextual factors (history, trust, and relationship building) of The continuum of community engagement in research. Institutional advances include community-engagement added as the fourth pillar of the institution’s strategic plan. Action strategies include 1) development a research navigation system to address community-campus research partnership administrative challenges and 2) an academy to build the capacities of community/patient partners to independently acquire, manage, and sustain grants and negotiate equity in dissemination of research.

MSM has leveraged E2 PLUS to identify systems improvements necessary to ensure that community/patient-centered research and partnerships are amplified and sustained.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) and patient/ community engaged research (P/CEnR) are shown to be effective approaches that improve health inequities, particularly among disadvantaged populations. While the science of CBPR demonstrates promising partnering practices that lead to effective interventions, there are institutional and structural barriers to creating and sustaining patient/community research within academic health centers (AHCs). As the field matures, there is a growing need to enhance patient/community leadership so that communities can set their own research agendas and priorities.

Engage for Equity PLUS sought to address these challenges by implementing an engagement intervention aimed at transforming AHCs through supporting champion teams of academic, community, and patient partners to strengthen research infrastructures for P/CEnR. This paper uses a qualitative, case study analysis to describe how E2PLUS enabled champion teams at Stanford School of Medicine, Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium, and Morehouse School of Medicine to pursue institutional change strategies through coaching, workshops, contextual data analysis, and a community of practice.

This paper describes key themes of how E2Plus helped identify targets of change by a) using institutional data collection as core to generating critical consciousness of contextual conditions; b) implementing feasible E2PLUS strategies to leverage conditions for catalyzing a champion team for advocacy and achievable actions; c) identifying the critical role of patients/community members in stimulating change; and d) the role of continual collective reflection.

We discuss the overall implications for E2 PLUS for other AHCs working toward sustainable community/patient engaged research policies and practices.