Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement in Health & Health Care
A project of the NAM Leadership Consortium, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation & California Health Care Foundation
What gets measured gets done—so let’s measure what matters most.
Everyone is part of a community. All communities are deeply impacted by systems that drive and influence their health (e.g., health and health care, transportation, housing). To meet the needs of communities, these systems can center communities as true partners in design, implementation, evaluation, and redesign. When solutions to improve outcomes are driven by community interests, concerns, assets, and needs, they will resonate with the very people they intend to serve. Meaningful community engagement can ultimately enhance the influence and effectiveness of health and health care policies and programs and ensure sustainable change that leads to improved health and well-being.
While tools and resources are available to provide practical guidance on and support for community engagement, the intention to engage does not always translate to or ensure effective engagement. In other words, the fundamental question is not whether entities think they are engaging communities, but whether communities feel engaged. Bridging this gap requires the ability to define and assess meaningful community engagement. Health and health care stakeholders must measure what matters: community engagement.
Project background
The National Academy of Medicine Leadership Consortium: Collaboration for a Learning Health System, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and California Health Care Foundation and guidance from an Organizing Committee, is advancing a project to identify concepts and metrics that can best assess the extent, process, and impact of community engagement. The Organizing Committee comprises experts in community engagement—community leaders, researchers, designers, and policy advisors—who are diverse in many ways, including geographic location, race/ethnicity, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Resources & dissemination tools
As part of this effort, the Organizing Committee is:
- Designing a new Conceptual Model that visually illustrates the dynamic relationship between community engagement and improved outcomes in health and health care. Stakeholders can use this model to assess engagement. Learn more about the Assessing Community Engagement Conceptual Model or read the Commentary for an in-depth description.
- Developing Impact Stories told through videos and other creative modes to demonstrate how different partnerships have assessed their engagement, determined the influence that engagement has had on their communities, and aligned their outcomes with the Assessing Community Engagement Conceptual Model. These impact stories highlight what is possible and how transformation can take place at a community, hospital, health system, and state level. Learn more about the Assessing Community Engagement Impact Stories.
- Synthesizing Assessment Instruments that identify specific metrics, survey questions, or tools that align with the outcomes in the Assessing Community Engagement Conceptual Model. The accompanying Summaries, based on findings from a literature review, include information on how communities were engaged in developing, implementing, or evaluating the instruments, populations and communities involved in using the instruments, psychometric properties (i.e., validity, reliability, and feasibility), the instrument’s questions, and alignment with the outcomes in the Conceptual Model. Learn more about the Assessing Community Engagement Assessment Instrument Summaries.
In addition to these three Assessing Community Engagement resources, the Organizing Committee is producing dissemination and implementing materials, including:
- A website to navigate and share the Assessing Community Engagement resources. To learn more, go to the website homepage.
- A Guide to Using the Resources that explains how each of the resources may be used to support measuring community engagement. To learn more, access the Guide to Using the Resources here.
- A framework for implementation and advancement of measuring community engagement in a NAM Special Publication. This full report will also explore the history and impact of community engagement and detail the vision, principles, and process of this project. Coming soon!
The Organizing Committee for Meaningful Community Engagement
The Organizing Committee comprises experts in design and community engagement—community leaders, researchers, designers, and policy advisors—who are diverse in many ways, including geographic location, race/ethnicity, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Their expertise and experiences have guided the Assessing Community Engagement project through conception, development, and implementation of its resources to support assessing engagement.
Learn more about the Organizing Committee’s backgrounds and expertise >>
Explore project resources to support engagement and dissemination
We want to hear from you!
Assessing community engagement involves the participation of many stakeholders. Click here to share feedback on these resources, insights on using the resources, or email leadershipconsortium@nas.edu and include “measure engagement” in the subject line to learn more about the NAM’s Assessing Community Engagement project.