Mentoring in developing, engaging with, and sustaining research teams that aligns with health and risk communication principles: apples and oranges or apples and apples?

ABSTRACT

We are an interdisciplinary group of colleagues dedicated to partner engagement and team science. This influences our academic work, informs our research mentorship and capacity-building initiatives with junior scholars, conditions how we communicate with individuals outside of our disciplines, and makes lifelong learning a priority for ourselves and our trainees. Using the analogy of a seven-layer cake, this paper describes our capacity-building approach to develop, engage, and sustain research teams in a manner that aligns with health and risk communication principles. While preparing for a pandemic and engaging in team-based academic research may seem like apples and oranges, they both require the same key component throughout the process that we must encourage in our mentorship practices – effective communication. We provide concrete examples from our experiences on research teams that span decades and institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty development
• research mentorship
• research capacity building
• health and risk communication
• professional development
• interdisciplinary team building

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Bella Alonso, MPH, for her support with the development of the visual in Appendix 1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the manuscript conceptualization, framework, and relevant examples and case studies included. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Daniela B. Friedman and all co-authors added text and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All seven authors read and approved the final manuscript.