Establishing the infrastructure to conduct comparative effectiveness research toward the elimination of disparities: a community-based participatory research framework

Abstract

In Tampa, Florida, researchers have partnered with community- and faith-based organizations to create the Comparative Effectiveness Research for Eliminating Disparities (CERED) infrastructure. Grounded in community-based participatory research, CERED acts on multiple levels of society to enhance informed decision making (IDM) of prostate cancer screening among Black men. CERED investigators combined both comparative effectiveness research and community-based participatory research to design a trial examining the effectiveness of community health workers and a digitally enhanced patient decision aid to support IDM in community settings as compared with "usual care" for prostate cancer screening. In addition, CERED researchers synthesized evidence through the development of systematic literature reviews analyzing the effectiveness of community health workers in changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of African American adults toward cancer prevention and education. An additional systematic review analyzed chemoprevention agents for prostate cancer as an emerging technique. Both of these reviews, and the comparative effectiveness trial supporting the IDM process, add to CERED's goal of providing evidence to eliminate cancer health disparities.

Keywords: community health workers; community-based participatory research; comparative effectiveness research; health disparity; prostate cancer.

FIGURE 1. Framework for Integrating CBPR and CER to create the infrasture for the CERED project

NOTE: CBPR = community-based participatory research; CER = comparative effectiveness research; CERED = Comparative Effectiveness Research for Eliminating Disparities.

FIGURE 2. The Evidence-Based Medicine Hierarchy Displaying

Systematic Reviews as the Top Tier of Evidence Used to Affect Health Care Policies