Community engagement and involvement

We are committed to engaging and involving communities from low and middle income countries (LMICs) in designing and delivering Global Health Research.

Community engagement and involvement: a core component of your Global Health Research

Our vision for community engagement and involvement (CEI) is that all global health research is undertaken in collaboration with the communities who are most likely affected by the research outcomes. We want those who are marginalised to have a meaningful voice in the full range of the research.

To support our vision we have 3 goals:

to produce, collate and share high quality CEI resources for our applicants and award holders, building the wider CEI evidence base
to promote the integration of our Guiding Principles for CEI within our commissioning processes and across the life cycle of research awards
to facilitate CEI shared learning, networking and dissemination across the research community and other stakeholders

What do we mean by CEI?

Across our Global Health Research portfolio, CEI is understood to mean:

an active involvement of the community throughout the research process, using participatory approaches and working in partnership with all key stakeholders
a range of activities which involve interactions between researchers, community members and stakeholders - these aim to improve the relevance, value, and conduct of health research

What we mean by ‘community’?

The broad term ‘community’ is used here to include:

patients, individual community members, carers, families and their neighbours
community leaders, non-governmental and civil society organisations and faith groups
service commissioners and providers
local policy and law administrators

Introducing our Guiding Principles for CEI

We expect CEI to be integral across the entire research lifecycle. Therefore, in addition to our vision and goals for CEI, we have created our Guiding Principles. These bring together wider work on the foundations of good CEI in research and present the key attributes in an accessible way. Our 7 Guiding Principles aim to improve understanding and help clarify our expectations of CEI.

The principles provide guidance for the research community in developing, delivering and evaluating CEI. They can help ensure planned activities are robust, appropriate and effective for the local context, research topic and design. The principles can also be useful as criteria to assess research proposals.

Our principles are not a set of rules, but a values-based tool. They are designed to be flexible and motivational and can be realised in practice in many ways. This reflects the contextual variation in global health research.

Who the principles are for

Our Guiding Principles for CEI are designed for everyone involved in the planning, delivery, evaluation and commissioning of research. This includes:

research teams
community members and stakeholders
CEI practitioners
funders

How the principles are presented

We’ve presented each principle as a short statement followed by an explanatory description.

A glossary of terms

The terms we use in describing the principles can have different interpretations and are sometimes debated. To mitigate this, we have produced a Guiding Principles for CEI glossary to describe the meaning of the words and phrases used.

Further practical resources

It is not possible to prescribe specific methods or approaches for CEI. This is due to the variety of community contexts in which the principles can be used, and the range of stakeholders involved. Therefore, further down on this page we have provided a list of useful resources to help your practical implementation of CEI activities.

Illustrative case studies

To share learning, we are working with awardees undertaking CEI to produce case studies of how they have used the principles in practice. We aim to publish these in mid 2025.

How to use our Guiding Principles for CEI

Our Guiding Principles for CEI aim to inform and inspire the research community. However, we recognise there are limitations of resource and experience to take into consideration. We therefore do not expect all principles to be rigidly implemented.

To encourage flexibility in planning for CEI, we have presented the principles in a non-linear way, as they interweave throughout and beyond the stages of the research lifecycle.

Research teams, partners and stakeholders are responsible for implementing CEI principles. These can include:

community leaders
community members
community organisations
funding bodies
service providers
policymakers
ethical review boards

Everyone should contribute to embedding the Guiding Principles for CEI throughout their research lifecycle.

Effective planning, coordination and support within the contexts you are working are essential in delivering on the principles. All partners should take time to understand the principles, and use them to support decisions and actions on CEI.

The 7 principles

CEI should be appropriate and relevant to the local context and research aims

Planning for CEI requires input from communities at early stages of research to ensure it aligns with local values and needs. CEI should take into consideration the aims, context and type of research, as well as local knowledge. You can achieve this through collaboration and partnerships with community members and organisations. This ensures wider representation, including the most vulnerable and marginalised.

Involve the community at the earliest opportunity and throughout the process

You can work with communities to identify priorities and to develop mechanisms for continued collaborations throughout research planning, delivery and dissemination. This enables a sense of joint ownership, adds value and increases the relevance, reach and impact of the research. The level of involvement may vary at different stages of the research lifecycle and according to the type or nature of research.

Understand your communities

Communities are not homogenous. They can consist of people with different interests, histories, social structures, values, and cultural customs. Learning about the communities and the variations within these are very important. It helps you to understand which CEI approaches will be appropriate within a research context. You should respect the different forms of knowledge and experience that influence the way people learn and engage.

Build open, trusting, and mutually beneficial relationships

Take time to actively listen, respect and understand the perspectives of communities and research collaborations. This helps to build strong relationships and enable community partnerships to thrive. It is necessary to develop mechanisms for two-way communication and feedback that are ethical, sustainable, and mutually beneficial.

Facilitate power-sharing

Regularly assessing and addressing evolving power dynamics ensures that power-sharing practices remain relevant and effective in promoting equitable CEI. Identifying opportunities to facilitate working together will enable community members to speak freely, without fear of being intimidated.

Be flexible and creative

There is no 'one size fits all' approach to CEI. Every community and context is unique, and responds to changing circumstances differently. Embedding critically reflective practices and trying different approaches in response to community feedback will ensure that research remains focused on local needs.

Embed monitoring, evaluation, and learning

Plans should be developed for recording and evaluating CEI processes and outcomes against the research objectives to understand their impact. These can be both positive and negative. This process helps to determine what works and enables changes to be made. Involving community members in monitoring, evaluation and learning activities from the beginning will help to produce indicators and measures that are mutually valuable.

How the Guiding Principles for CEI were developed

Our Guiding Principles for CEI have been co-produced with both experiential and academic evidence bases. Initially, we carried out a rapid scoping review of literature. This, along with previous development work, aimed to identify CEI principles related to the ways researchers and communities interact within the global health research context. A group of CEI Leads across NIHR awards provided feedback on the emerging principles. The principles were further refined with an independent group of CEI experts. Finally, we ran a public consultation survey to build further consensus on these principles.

We recognise that like the contexts in which they will be used, the principles may evolve further over time.

Our resources

The following NIHR resources will support you further in all aspects of your CEI journey.

Glossary

We’ve developed a Guiding Principles for CEI Glossary. This has been developed to help you to better understand the principles and terminology used.

An Introduction and Practical Guide to Community Engagement and Involvement in Global Health Research – online course

To support you in embedding CEI in your research, we partnered with Mesh Community Engagement Network and The Global Health Network to develop a free online course: An Introduction and Practical Guide to Community Engagement and Involvement in Global Health Research. This offers 7 modules covering different topics.

Our course aims to develop your understanding and knowledge of CEI. You'll also learn:

how to plan and design ethical, impactful CEI in health research
a range of approaches to CEI
the aims and value of CEI

Podcast Series: Spotlight on community engagement and involvement: Improving global health research and outcomes through engaging with local communities

Our Global Health podcast series brings together guest speakers from across the globe to discuss the importance of CEI and share top tips for good practice.

Our CEI toolkit

We partnered with the Institute of Development Studies to produce a series of learning resources to support researchers to deliver meaningful, outcomes-based CEI.

CEI shared learning events

We are keen to bring together those undertaking CEI on NIHR awards at our shared learning events. You can find previous event recordings on our NIHR Library YouTube playlist.

Other useful resources

The UNICEF minimum quality standards and indicators in community engagement act as a guide for establishing intentional and structured community engagement at the core of sustainable development progress
UK Standards for Public Involvement are a useful resource for planning and evaluating CEI
The NIHR guidance on co-producing a research project explains the term 'co-production' and the key principles and features of working with the public to co-produce a research project
The NIHR payment guidance for researchers and professionals outlines how to cost public involvement activities at any stage of the research process
The Mesh community engagement network is a collaborative community that supports networking and sharing of good practice. We’ve worked with Mesh to deliver the CEI online course mentioned in our resources above. Mesh has also produced other resources relevant to the NIHR community such as the Mesh practical guide to planning an engagement strategy for your global health research funding application
Learning for Involvement is the home for resources and training about public involvement in health and social care research. Take a look around to explore the resources and training already recommended by our community, or upload your own content or recommendations

Become a CEI specialist reviewer

We are looking for reviewers to assess research applications submitted to our Global Health Research programme.

As a CEI specialist reviewer, you will have experience in leading, designing and implementing CEI activities in LMICs, either as a practitioner or an academic. To register, please email ceiglobalhealth@nihr.ac.uk with the subject line "CEI specialist reviewer registration form".

Contact our CEI team

For any queries, please contact our CEI team at ceiglobalhealth@nihr.ac.uk.