Systematic review of community-engaged research in ophthalmology

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Community-engaged research (CEnR) allows researchers and community organizations to partner together to improve health outcomes and to decrease health disparities. While prevalent in other fields of medicine, it is rarely used in ophthalmology.

Areas covered: A comprehensive search of Ovid MEDLINE, NLM PubMed, Ovid Embase, Scopus and the Cochrane Library for the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) ‘Community-based participatory research’ and text word variations including participatory research, community engagement, community research, partnered research, community–institutional relations, CEnR, CBPR in addition to variations on ophthalmology, eye diseases, vision disorders and eye injuries yielded 451 unique references. Two ophthalmologists (KHN, PANC) reviewed the titles and abstracts and identified 37 relevant studies. Expert consultation yielded an additional reference. After reviewing the full texts and excluding non-English texts, 18 articles met the necessary criteria. The eighteen articles all utilized at least one of the nine principles of CEnR.

Expert commentary: Ophthalmology is perfectly positioned to benefit from CEnR. Increased community engagement in ophthalmic research would expand the reach of our work and address some of the most difficult problems in vision disparities and outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-engaged research
• community-based participatory research
• access to eye care
• health equity
• health disparities
• community-engaged research in ophthalmology

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the following. National Eye Institute [IK23EY025320] (PANC), a Career Development Award from Research to Prevent Blindness (PANC), in part by an unrestricted/challenge award to Yale Eye Center from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB), Inc. (KHN), the Yale CTSA grant UL1TR000142 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, NIH (MNS).