We are pleased to share the news of our published evidence review, which looks at how to work with communities to set priorities for research and action.
Health inequalities mean some groups have worse health than others. This is a major challenge and often linked to things like housing, education, discrimination, and jobs. We need to have good research evidence about health inequalities and how to tackle them. There are many options for what can be researched, though, so we need to understand what should be researched as a priority. To know what these priorities should be, we must understand what is most important to our communities.
The Coventry HDRC carried out an evidence review to understand the different approaches for involving communities in setting these priorities. An evidence review means looking at research that already exists and summarising what it says. By doing an evidence review, we wanted to shape our work in the Coventry HDRC and share the learning with others. The evidence review team included people from Coventry City Council, University of Warwick, and members of the public involved in the HDRC.
We used a standard research method called PRISMA, which stands for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. It is designed to improve the reporting of systematic reviews and provides authors with advice and examples of how to fully report why a systematic review was done, what methods were used, and what results were found. This helped us make sure the review was thorough. We searched online for research using academic databases. There were over 1000 search results. We narrowed them down to 18 studies to include in the review. We read and pulled out the key findings from each study to write a report of the evidence review.
The studies used different methods, but we found some common themes. Many of them used creative and collaborative ways to involve people in workshops or discussions. Some used techniques like rounds of surveys with experts or games to encourage discussion, and some used a combination of different techniques. Building trust between researchers, organisations, and communities was important. Some did this by sharing meals or researchers joining in community activities. It was important to include diverse communities, especially those who are more affected by health inequalities. To be inclusive, information should be available in different written, video, and verbal formats, and there should be in-person and online ways to get involved. The findings also highlight practical lessons, such as having people responsible to coordinate the process.
The review shows ways to involve communities in a meaningful way, which can make research more fair and relevant. Our findings will help Coventry HDRC and others design better ways to work with communities and set research priorities that matter to them. We have started to put the learning into practice in a workshop about priorities in housing and health.
Read the published evidence review "Approaches for community intervention and research priority setting to reduce health inequalities: a scoping review" in the Journal of Public Health.