Although Spit for Science was not conceptualized or designed intentionally as a formal community-engaged project, clearly it borrows many concepts from community-engaged research. Admittedly, I only became more deeply educated about the field of community-engaged research because community engagement is a strategic focus area for my university, and one of the foundational pillars of our diverse, public, urban research institution located in the heart of a city (http://community.vcu.edu). Accordingly, it was my colleagues who were more deeply involved in community engagement that introduced me formally to this area and recognized the clear connections to what we were doing in the Spit for Science project. I believe my ignorance was in part a product of the fact that community-engaged research is largely discussed within the context of reducing health disparities (Wallerstein and Duran, 2010, Cacari-Stone et al., 2014, Israel et al., 2010) and improving health care (Tapp and Dulin, 2010, Williams et al., 2009). There is an extensive literature about the power of the CBPR design to develop more effective interventions for diverse communities, and CBPR practices are far more common
