Engaging Community Networks to Improve Depression Services: A Cluster-Randomized Trial of a Community Engagement and Planning Intervention

This paper explores the effects of a group-randomized controlled trial, Community Partners in Care (CPIC), on the development of interagency networks for collaborative depression care improvement between a community engagement and planning (CEP) intervention and a resources for services (RS) intervention that provided the same content solely via technical assistance to individual programs. Both interventions consisted of a diverse set of service agencies, including health, mental health, substance abuse treatment, social services, and community-trusted organizations such as churches and parks and recreation centers. Participants in the community councils for the CEP intervention reflected a range of agency leaders, staff, and other stakeholders. Network analysis of partnerships among agencies in the CEP versus RS condition, and qualitative analysis of perspectives on interagency network changes from multiple sources, suggested that agencies in the CEP intervention exhibited greater growth in partnership capacity among themselves than did RS agencies. CEP participants also viewed the coalition development intervention both as promoting collaboration in depression services and as a meaningful community capacity building activity. These descriptive results help to identify plausible mechanisms of action for the CPIC interventions and can be used to guide development of future community engagement interventions and evaluations in under-resourced communities.

Sampling and Recruiting Community-Based Programs Using Community-Partnered Participation Research

The inclusion of community partners in participatory leadership roles around statistical design issues like sampling and randomization has raised concerns about scientific integrity. This article presents a case study of a community-partnered, participatory research (CPPR) cluster-randomized, comparative effectiveness trial to examine implications for study validity and community relevance. Using study administrative data, we describe a CPPR-based design and implementation process for agency/program sampling, recruitment, and randomization for depression interventions. We calculated participation rates and used cross-tabulation to examine balance by intervention status on service sector, location, and program size and assessed differences in potential populations served. We achieved 51.5% agency and 89.6% program participation rates. Programs in different intervention arms were not significantly different on service sector, location, or program size. Participating programs were not significantly different from eligible, nonparticipating programs on community characteristics. We reject claims that including community members in research design decisions compromises scientific integrity. This case study suggests that a CPPR process can improve implementation of a community-grounded, rigorous randomized comparative effectiveness trial.

Partnered evaluation of a community engagement intervention: use of a kickoff conference in a randomized trial for depression care improvement in underserved communities

Community partnered research and engagement strategies are gaining recognition as innovative approaches to improving health care systems and reducing health disparities in underserved communities. These strategies may have particular relevance for mental health interventions in low income, minority communities in which there often is stigma and silence surrounding conditions such as depression and difficulty in implementing improved access and quality of care. At the same time, there is a relative dearth of evidence on the effectiveness of specific community engagement interventions and on the design, process, and context of these interventions necessary for understanding their implementation and generalizability. This article evaluates one of a number of community engagement strategies employed in the Community Partners in Care (CPIC) study, the first randomized controlled trial of the role of community engagement in adapting and implementing evidence-based depression care. We specifically describe the unique goals and features of a community engagement kickoff conference as used in CPIC and provide evidence on the effectiveness of this type of intervention by analyzing its impact on: 1) stimulating a dialog sense of collective efficacy, and opportunities for learning and networking to address depression and depression care in the community; 2) activating interest and participation in CPIC's randomized trial of two different ways to implement evidence-based quality improvement programs for depression across diverse community agencies; and 3) introducing evidence-based toolkits and collaborative care models to potential participants in both intervention conditions and other community members. We evaluated the effectiveness of the conference through a community-partnered process in which both community and academic project members were involved in study design, data collection and analysis. Data sources include participant conference evaluation forms (n = 187 over two conferences; response rate 59%) and qualitative observation field notes of each conference session. Mixed methods for the analysis consist of descriptive statistics of conference evaluation form ratings, as well as thematic analysis of evaluation form write-in comments and qualitative observation notes. Results indicate the effectiveness of this type of event for each of the three main goals, and provide insights into intervention implementation and use of similar community engagement strategies for other studies.

Community Partners in Care: Leveraging Community Diversity to Improve Depression Care for Underserved Populations

Research suggests that the quality and outcomes of depression treatment for adults can be substantially improved through "collaborative care" programs. However, there is a lack of resources required to implement such programs in vulnerable communities. Our paper examines the planning phase of the Community Partners in Care (CPIC) initiative, which addresses this problem through a unique approach in which academic institutions partner directly with a wide range of community-based and service organizations in all phases of the project fielded in two underserved communities in Los Angeles. CPIC offers a unique opportunity to understand how diverse organizations can work together to address community depression care needs and to analyze the potential strengths and tradeoffs of coordinating among such varied entities. This article focuses on intra-group dynamics that surround the process of participatory research and reports results of the first wave of process evaluation of the planning phase of the CPIC initiative. Our analysis explores two main themes: Community-Partnered Participatory Research and benefits and challenges of collaboration in diverse groups.