Community Engagment

Partnering with People with Lived Experience

Alisa Lincoln & Suzanne Garverich

The Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research (IHESJR) will support the BTI in developing a multi-year strategy to increase community engagement across multiple trauma related research projects. As a first step, in years 1 and 2, the IHESJR will lead the development of training modules to facilitate this process. Participatory research practices require early efforts to include cross-training of diverse team members which facilitates community/trust building and supports the full participation of team members in all aspects of the research process. Such cross-trainings allow community members to train academic partners in their areas of expertise and knowledge, including those from lived-experience and, conversely, academic partners can share aspects of their professional roles. In turn, the academic partners provide training in their expertise including the state of knowledge of the area of inquiry, in this case trauma research, the wide range of research methods that are used to study trauma, and principles of ethical research practice. Dr. Lincoln and her teams have developed similar curricula across multiple projects that have supported the inclusion of people with lived-experience in research.  Examples of such efforts have included engaging: firearms owners in research to increase understanding of how firearms owners think about and understand suicide prevention efforts to improve suicide prevention for firearms owners; young adults living with serious mental illness who experience housing instability to understand how housing impacts health; and engaging high school students who had previously participated in a middle-school dating violence prevention program in the design and conduct of an evaluation of that prevention program. 

The IHESJR will lead the development of a curriculum, partnered with people with lived experience with trauma, which can be engaged across multiple trauma related research projects and provide an entry point to increasing community engagement in research.  The curriculum will include state of the art knowledge of trauma research, informed by the diverse expertise at the Broad and the BTI network, research methods engaged in trauma research including innovative approaches, and an introduction to the ethical conduct of research. The curriculum will be designed for implementation with a diverse group of stakeholders and will be attentive to the needs of people with a wide range of educational backgrounds, literacy levels, and experience and knowledge of research. 

Alisa Lincoln, Northeastern University

Alisa K. Lincoln, MPH, PhD, is an Interdisciplinary Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences and Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University and the co-founder of the Northeastern University Public Evaluation Lab (NU-PEL). Her research examines the way that multiple forms of social exclusion and marginalization, including racism and stigma, both contribute to and are consequences of poor health, and specifically mental health. She examines questions related to social factors and their relationships with mental health and mental health services focusing on how social disadvantage impacts people’s mental health and their experiences and outcome in mental health care.  Her work has examined public mental health services, racial and ethnic disparities and health, and literacy and health. She continues to develop innovative models by which we can increase the inclusion of communities and stakeholders in the process of research and the co-creation of knowledge, and has led some of the first federally funded studies exploring the use of Community Based Participatory Action Research (CBPR) in mental health care. Her multiple research teams also prioritize the inclusion of students through a shared mentorship approach including undergraduates, master’s level, doctoral level and post-doctoral students. She has over 25 years of continuous research funding from sources including NIMH, NIMHD, SAMHSA, NIJ, RWJF, and other funders.

BTI Artist-in-Residence Program

Allison Maria Rodriguez

Rodriguez’s work with BTI will focus on two primary elements: first, the conceptual and logistical development of an ongoing Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program for the BTI and secondly the development and exhibition of a multimedia art project. Rodriguez will be in residence for two years to allow time for the development of the structure and functionality of the AiR position in preparation for future artists while also piloting the program with her own BTI project. 

Please visit the Artist in Residence webpage to learn more about the program.

Allison Maria Rodriguez, Interdisciplinary Artist

Allison Maria Rodriguez is a first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in video installation and new media. She creates immersive experiential spaces that challenge conventional ways of knowing and understanding the world. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction and the interconnectivity of existence. Through video, performance, digital animation, photography, drawing, collage and installation, Rodriguez merges and blends mediums to create new pictorial spaces for aesthetic, emotional and conceptual exploration. She uses art to communicate beyond language – to open up a space of possibility for the viewer to encounter alternative ways of connecting to the emotional realities of others.

Please visit the Artist in Residence webpage to learn more about Rodriguez.