These concepts are closely connected to the more formal field of community-engaged participatory research. Although there is no one model for community-based participatory research (CBPR), the central tenet of CBPR is that researchers and community partners work together on the research (Weiner and McDonald, 2013). Many of the National Institutes of Health’s 27 institutes and centers encourage investigators to engage the public in their research, and the NIH Director has a Council of Public Representatives (COPR), which has formulated guidelines and suggestions for CBPR (Ahmed and Palermo, 2010). There is clearly a spectrum of involvement with respect to the level of participation by community members across different community-engaged projects, with community partners varying in their degree of involvement in the planning, implementation, evaluation, and decision-making for the project (Goodman and Sanders Thompson, 2017). It has been argued that, ideally, the voices of community members are given equal weight to those of academic researchers, and that researchers and community partners are equal and active collaborative partners on the project from the design and implementation of the project, to the interpretation of findings and dissemination of results (Goodman and Sanders Thompson, 2017).
