- How do you create an evaluation and reporting framework that accurately and equitably represents the diverse forms of community engagement activity taking place in 11 clinical trial sites over 6 countries?
- Can we create and test a flexible, yet robust, evaluation framework that could potentially be rolled out globally?
Just over a year and a half ago, under the mentorship of our Deputy Head of Public Engagement and Impact, Mhairi Stewart, a pilot study set out to find out if this was feasible. The whole project was co-produced by the trial site Community Engagement Officers (CEOs) and the monitoring and evaluation lead, Christine Laidson, for the #SimpliciTB clinical trials.
Community engagement is a critical element of all trials, and activities differ at each site. Our 11 sites have activities ranging from community advisory boards, to radio plays, school and youth ambassador programmes, to outreach to thousands of people in the mining industries. Take in this range of activities, add in differences in language, geography, culture, and social structure, and it seemed at first a very daunting, perhaps impossible task. However our group of CEOs rose to the challenge and at our final meeting of the pilot project this month in Mwanza, Tanzania, we were able to present the significant outputs and outcomes of our work.
Together we have created a combined evaluation model, flexible enough to work over all sites. We have undertaken three rounds of quarterly reporting using this model, with one more report to follow. Sites have fed back that they use the model to plan their activities, and are inspired by each other's work as highlighted in the report. We realise there is global interest in our model and our reporting structure, so we are preparing a manuscript to go into detail on our outcomes, but we know of at least one global partner who is interested in rolling out a modified version of our model in their TB clinical trials worldwide. All this, and we have also delivered over 18 months of practitioner led professional and capacity development for our CEOs who are now organising into a network of leading practitioners in clinical trial community engagement. We are working with our CEOs to secure funding for future annual meetings to keep up, and expand upon, capacity development in this critical area.
For more details please contact us on our info line: [email protected]
#ClinicalTrials #Tuberculosis #WorldTBDay #TB
TB Alliance
Tereza Kasaeva
Chikwe Ihekweazu
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Self Employed at Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative - DNDi
3wKeep growing!