It has been a busy few weeks for the HLB-SIMPLe Community Engagement Subcommittee (CESC)! The leadership transitioned from Mighty Ernest Mosimanegape Moseki (of InterCARE) to Claudia E. Ordóñez (of iHEART-SA) as the new chair, and Nabila Youssouf (of InterCARE) as vice-chair. A huge thank you to Ernest for taking on this position over the last year!
The CESC primary objectives are to: a) Operationalize community-engaged research in the context of implementation science; and b) Facilitate sharing of best practices and lessons learned for community-engaged research among and beyond the HLB-SIMPLe Alliance.
Subcommittee members were able to meet in person for the first time during the HLB-SIMPLe Annual Meeting in Uganda in May and reviewed activities and their progress to date, which include:
- Development and implementation of a baseline survey to assess community engagement understanding and approaches among each of the six Alliance projects, with the purpose of disseminating best practices and future benchmarking. Thanks again to all the sites’ teams for your time in the completion of the survey! Results will be disseminated later this year.
- “Check-ins” with Alliance projects sharing relevant information for best practices and gathering feedback for support needs regarding CE in implementation science.
The vision for the year ahead centers around more and on-going engagement with a wide range of stakeholders from each of the Alliance projects to foster relations and build a network on HIV and hypertension care. The CESC also wants to hear from all sites and disseminate their important work regarding stakeholder engagement. We plan to publish the community engagement activities and stories from each Alliance site every quarter. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any ideas, questions, or requests!
Best,