These four main principles of community engaged research influence the interaction between academic researchers and community:

1. Taking an asset- or strength-based approach: The research builds on the strengths and assets of a community.
2. Being action-oriented: The research should aim to have a tangible impact on improving community well-being, i.e., not only in advancing the science on a research topic.
3. Bidirectional learning and teaching: All partners bring their own expertise, and each can learn invaluable lessons from one another. Thus, all partners should be respected and compensated as experts based on their experiences.
4. Equitably sharing resources and time: Partners openly and iteratively discuss expectations and agree on the use of resources and time. This can be achieved by cooperatively going through the process of creating a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

CERP produced this list of best practices based on CEnR literature and team members’ personal experiences. These are our expectations for conducting community engaged research and practice in the College of Public Health:

1. Avoid parachute research. This includes conducting research that only serves to benefit science and resources disappear from the community after the research is done; this has contributed to a general distrust for research. Plan early for sustainability of the work after the project ends.
2. Treat community partners as the experts of their experience. This includes respecting and compensating community partners for their role in a project. It includes being responsive to communication and as accommodating and flexible as possible. It also means being open-minded to the ideas and suggestions of partners and actually integrating those ideas and suggestions into research whenever possible. Partners need to feel their contributions are valued and integrated into the work being done.
3. Allow sufficient time to develop a relationship and collaborate on decision-making. Shared decision-making takes more time and effort than unilateral decision-making. One suggestion for building a relationship is showing interest in the range of your partner’s organization (e.g., activities outside of the research project).
4. Create a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Clearly define partners’ roles, responsibilities, communication methods, decision-making and conflict resolution processes, resources, data uses, etc.
5. Prioritize capacity building. This can include providing material resources and training such that a benefit for the community partner is becoming better equipped to engage meaningfully in other projects.
6. Co-ownership of the results and co-authorship of research products should be expected. This includes all partners having access to the results and conclusions in a timely manner before academic journal articles are published and in formats that are accessible to all (i.e., briefs, infographics, videos, etc.).

The challenge: CEnR often includes community members and other stakeholders as collaborators. Any research collaborators who interact with human subjects or have access to human subjects research data require training in research ethics and human subjects protections. The training most commonly used—the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI)—is written at a post-secondary reading level and is often burdensome and excessive for non-academic community members, in terms of cost, readability and time to complete.

Temple's solution: Following discussions with CERP in 2020, the Temple IRB now accepts CIRTification Online as suitable and sufficient human subjects research ethics training for community research partners. CIRTification completion certificates will be accepted as fulfillment of this training requirement for community research partners who are not formally affiliated with Temple University and do not have a TUID and AccessNet password. This training, developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago, is free, web-based and self-paced. CERP selected this training for its feasibility and completeness after comparing it to similar options.

As a reminder, anyone with a Temple University AccessNet password should complete the CITI training.

More information: You can read about the development of CIRTification and learn more about the differences between the traditional CITI training and the online CIRTification training. Contact CERP@temple.edu for more information on the CIRTification training, including step-by-step instructions for helping community partners navigate to, enroll in and complete it.