Nina Wallerstein, DrPH, MPH, Joins NAM Committee for Assessing Community Engagement

Nina Wallerstein, Director of HSC's Center for Participatory Research, was recently invited to serve on the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) steering committee to assess community engagement. In cooperation with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the project will explore ways to assess community engagement in the shaping and implementation of health policies and programs.

The steering committee will guide this work by reviewing existing measures and structuring a process for effectively measuring the meaningful engagement of individuals, families, and community organizations in the development and implementation of healthcare policy activities most important to their personal and community health outcomes.

Wallerstein was asked to join the committee based on her team's long-term Engage for Equity research, on developing and testing measures of promising community engagement practices and outcomes from around the country. They have now surveyed over 400 federally-funded research partnerships across the nation - mostly National Institutes of Health - in two waves of data collection.