Research Engagement and Activities in Collaborative Teams (REACT)
Based within the Boness Addictions Lab at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions (CASAA), the Research Engagement and Activities in Collaborative Teams (REACT) Study is working to strengthen partnerships between communities and academic researchers.
Community-engaged research is built on the idea that the people and communities most affected by research should have a meaningful role throughout the research process. Yet there is still a need to better understand and measure what effective engagement between community and academic partners actually looks like.
The REACT Study is addressing this need by developing a new measure of engagement activities within community-academic research partnerships. The goal is to create a practical tool that research teams can use to evaluate how well they are working together, identify opportunities to strengthen their partnerships, and ultimately support research that is more responsive to the communities it serves.
REACT is itself grounded in community engagement. The project brings together more than 20 community and academic partners with diverse backgrounds and experiences from research projects across the United States, including New Mexico, California, and Pennsylvania.
The study is being conducted in three phases. First, community and academic partners work together to define what meaningful engagement activities look like across different research experiences. The team then uses those findings to develop questions that capture important aspects of community-academic collaboration. Finally, the researchers will evaluate those questions to develop a reliable measure that can be used by community-engaged research teams. The resulting measure is planned to be available in both English and Spanish.
Through REACT, the Boness Addictions Lab is helping advance a model of research in which community members are not simply participants, but partners in shaping how research is designed and carried out. By creating better ways to understand and strengthen those partnerships, the project aims to support research that is more equitable, collaborative, and responsive to community priorities.
