Background & purpose
Greetings on behalf of the Stakeholder & Community Engagement Workgroup (SCE-WG) of the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens initiative (CPTR). The CPTR Initiative is a cross-sector program that aims to greatly reduce the time needed to develop and make available novel drug regimens for tuberculosis. The CPTR SCE-WG is charged with developing tools and resources to support and promote better stakeholder engagement and participatory practices in TB research.
There is growing consensus among biomedical researchers that stakeholder and community engagement (SCE) can make tremendous contributions to the outcomes of clinical trials. Two important recent advances in the field of tuberculosis could help facilitate effective SCE. First, the release of tools and resources, such as the Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for Tuberculosis Drug Trials (GPP-TB), have helped articulate common language and offer strategies to help nurture the engagement process. Second, there has been promising progress in incorporating rigorous evaluation processes into SCE programs. However, in spite of these advances, two challenges remain. First, there continues to be a dearth of published empirical evidence measuring the impact of community and stakeholder engagement in tuberculosis. Second, without this evidence, current cutbacks in funding to tuberculosis research could jeopardise the budding support for SCE programs.
This survey will be used as a tool to help compile examples of community engagement and GPP in practice. We would like to highlight the overall impact, as observed, on research/clinical trial conduct. These examples will help to call attention to the important role of SCE programs as well as the need for both new and sustained investment in SCE.
The survey can be accessed here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CPTR-CESurvey2014.