Capacity of community advisory boards for effective engagement in clinical research: a mixed methods study
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC medical ethics
Abstract
Community engagement is a key component in health research. One of the ways health researchers
ensure community engagement is through Community Advisory Boards (CABs). The capacity of CABs to properly
perform their role in clinical research has not been well described in many resource limited settings. In this study, we
assessed the capacity of CABs for effective community engagement in Uganda.
Methods: We conducted a cross sectional study with mixed methods. We used structured questionnaires and key
informant interviews (KII) to collect data from CAB members, trial investigators, and community liaison officers. For
quantitative data, we used descriptive statistics while for qualitative data we used content analysis.
Results: Seventy three CAB members were interviewed using structured questionnaires; 58.9% males, median age
49 years (IQR 24–70), 71.2% had attained tertiary education, 42.5% never attended any research ethics training, only
26% had a training in human subject protection, 30.1% had training in health research, 50.7% never attended any
training about the role of CABs, and 72.6% had no guidelines for their operation. On the qualitative aspect, 24 KIIs
cited CAB members to have some skills and ability to understand and review study documents, offer guidance on
community norms and expectations and give valuable feedback to the investigators. However, challenges like limited
resources, lack of independence and guidelines, and knowledge gaps about research ethics were cited as hindrances
of CABs capacity.
Conclusion: Though CABs have some capacity to perform their role in the Ugandan setting, their functionality is
limited by lack of resources to facilitate their work, lack of independence, lack of guidelines for their operations and
limited knowledge regarding issues of research ethics and protection of the rights of trial participants.
Description
Keywords
CABs, Capacity, Research communities, Community engagement, Research ethics, Training, Knowledge
Citation
Mugenyi, L., Mijumbi, A., Nanfuka, M., Agaba, C., Kaliba, F., Semakula, I. S., ... & Ochieng, J. (2021). Capacity of community advisory boards for effective engagement in clinical research: a mixed methods study. BMC medical ethics, 22(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00733-0