What is true community engagement and why it matters (now more than ever)

COVID-19 has changed our world in many ways. Among others, the pandemic and its disproportionate burden among populations that have been socially and economically marginalized, or experience other kinds of vulnerability or disadvantage, are presenting organizations and their leaders with an opportunity to reflect on key drivers of global health efforts, and to address health and social issues that contribute to local inequities. Increasingly, ‘community engagement’ has become a buzzword among a variety of health and human rights organizations and government agencies. It’s also the focus of new resources, and capacity building and training efforts. With the increasing use of this term, there are also some confusions on what ‘community engagement’ actually is. This renewed emphasis on the centrality of communities is important for the future of healthcare and global health, and calls for a shared understanding of the actual meaning of ‘community engagement. ’ First, the main beneficiaries of community engagement are local communities themselves. For this to occur, communities should be empowered to strengthen local health and social systems, and improve local conditions by owning and leading the decision-making process that would result in community-driven data, solutions, and policies, and ultimately in community transformation and well-being. This process is very different from ‘audience engagement [2,3]’ and other similar top-down approaches that merely seek to “deepen relationships” with key stakeholders [2] to benefit the reputation, products, and/or services of local and global organizations, companies, and governments. True community engagement should create new power dynamics, and serve as “a catalyst for changing policies, programs and practices [4]. ” True community engagement is “a key public health, healthcare, communication, and international/community development area that seeks to empower communities to achieve behavioral and social results in support of improved health or development outcomes [5]. ” It’s about collaborating with and empowering communities and NOT only informing or surveying them or asking for their input on programs otherwise designed and led outside of the community. It’s about listening to local communities and recognizing the expert in every community member, and every leader representing the community. It’s about working toward and celebrating community ownership of interventions, and research design, implementation and evaluation, while building trust, long-term relationships and willingness for participation among communities and their leaders. Ultimately, this is a “bottom-upapproach” that requiresmuch-needed changes in existing systems of power and privilege. As a way of comparison, Table 1 includes examples of what is NOT true community engagement. So, why embrace a community-driven approach to communication [9,10] across the fields of healthcare, public health, global health, medicine, international development, and many others? If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated once again that “trusted, clear and effective communication and engagement approaches are critical to ensure that fear, panic and rumors do not undermine COVID-19 responses [11]” and recovery. We cannot do this without listening to and engaging local communities in designing and implementing communication interventions that meet their needs and cultural preferences, and influence local policies. In implementing a community-based approach to risk and health communication, it’s important to think of it as a participatory approach – a two-way interaction with the community at every step of the risk mitigation process, right from the step of having the community “determine what issues should be addressed, and why [9]. ” In this context, participation (and participatory methods) should be both a goal and a tool [9] to empower local communities to contribute to longterm system change by, for example, deciding on the allocation of resources and funds to identified community issues, designing local policies to address implicit and institutional bias, developing community-driven action plans, and/or creating new services and opportunities for the community at large.