Engaging with community partners can enrich and inform research through the lifespan of a trial. In a session at the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory’s 2025 Annual Steering Committee Meeting, Cherise Harrington, cochair of the program’s Community Health Improvement Core, led a discussion about building relationships with communities in pragmatic research.

The panelists included Jennifer Kawi, principal investigator (PI) for APA-SM; Kathleen Sluka, PI for FM-TIPS; Sebastian Tong, PI for AIM-CP; and David Wetter, PI for LungSMART. They shared examples of how community relationships have enriched their trials, along with impediments to meaningful community engagement and successful methods for building relationships with communities.

Key Strategies for Engaging With Communities

• Build long-standing relationships with community partners, develop shared goals, and practice shared decision-making.
• Design for sustainability. Design research projects with minimal disruption to the clinical workflow; utilize existing community health workers and programs; and integrate behavioral economics principles (nudges) into study design.
• Budget for community engagement and include community members in study planning from the beginning.
• Engage in the preferred language of the community. Ensure there are research staff who are fluent in the community’s preferred language and embedded in the community so they can provide key perspectives and help build trust.
• Provide community health workers and research staff with training on community engagement.
• Connect with community members where they spend time, such as community events and fairs, and visit local clinics to share information for referrals.

About the Trials

• AIM-CP, supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research, is testing the implementation of a care management program to address disparate access to nonpharmacological treatments for chronic pain in rural populations.
• APA-SM, supported by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, is testing a 4-week auricular point acupressure intervention for self-management of chronic pain in rural communities in South Carolina and Texas.
• FM-TIPS, supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, is examining whether the addition of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation to routine physical therapy improves movement-evoked pain compared with physical therapy alone among patients with fibromyalgia.
• LungSMART, supported by the National Cancer Institute, is testing telehealth interventions designed to address logistical barriers and hesitancy around completing lung cancer screening among patients receiving care in community health centers in Utah.

This summer, we are sharing highlights from the 2025 Annual Steering Committee Meeting. Access the complete collection of meeting materials.