Community Engagement
Overview
The Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) community engagement department was established in 2002 to provide centralized coordination of Clinical Research Sites’ (CRS) community engagement activities.
The department works closely with stakeholders, in collaboration with CTU Community Advisory Board (CAB) that represent a wide spectrum of the community including political and community leaders, health service providers, religious and traditional leaders, government institutions, NGOs, CBOs, FBOs, and direct stakeholders of highly affected populations, including people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH), women, and adolescents.
We work with stakeholders such as Ministry of Health and Child Care, National AIDS Council (NAC) District AIDS Action Committees (DAACs), Population Services International (PSI), Media, Zimbabwe Medical Association (ZIMA), Community-based Advocacy Groups, Faith-based Organizations, HIV Support Groups, Women’s Groups, and Men’s Forums. The diversity of the CAB membership, allows CRS staff to safely navigate the community, taking cues as to the time and place that protocol activities would be welcome.
Our community engagement efforts promote specialization among CAB members for more effective community involvement, while still retaining geographical and direct stakeholder representation. We have 4 dedicated CABs for each of the active trials networks that the CTU has participated in: ACTG (Adult trials), HPTN (HIV prevention trials), IMPAACT (paediatric, adolescent, pregnant and lactating women trials), HVTN (vaccine trials). Current CAB membership (N=35) and reflects gender equity (25 women & 10 men), in line with the nature of research a network is undertaking, age for effective representation of the target population for research (age 16-62 years), and geographical location (to ensure adequate representation of the whole community).
Training activities are conducted with curricula covering research ethics, protocol development, HIV/AIDS, communicable and non-communicable diseases, media relations, communication skills, report and manuscript writing, and advocacy, variously developed through local, regional, and national efforts.
Over the years, community engagement staff and CAB members have also made seminal contributions to international CABs and Community Working Groups (CWGs) serving as CWG protocol representatives, core chairpersons of international CABs’, Global Youth Representatives and Network steering committee members. From 2020 to 2023 we had an unprecedented number (4) of ACTG Community Scientific Subcommittee (CSS) members of the Global CAB (GCAB) from a single country, where membership is through applications & interviews.
We believe CABs do more than simply bridge the gap between researchers and the community; their participation ensures that communities are well represented in all phases of research planning, study implementation, and results dissemination.
