Overcoming Constraints to Effective Community Engagement

Community Engagement Challenges

Prompt 1: The first principle of community engagement offered in Chapter 2 is “Be clear about the purpose and goals of the engagement effort and the population and/or community you want to engage.” In the professor desk interview, she strongly recommend a different approach: creating the purpose and goals together with the community, you are engaging. Discuss which approach preferred and why. (Approach in chapter 2 or the professor’s approach)

From one perspective, it would be a waste of scarce resources to venture into a new engagement effort without first identifying an overarching purpose and developing some general goals. Indeed, without an initial focus on what needs to be accomplished, engagement efforts will invariably fail to achieve optimal outcomes. Furthermore, some degree of flexibility in formulating goals is described in chapter 2’s first principle of community engagement wherein the point is made, “Ask community members to specify their health-related concerns, identify areas that need action, and become involved in planning, designing, implementing and evaluating appropriate programs” (p. 47). Nevertheless, this type of after-the-fact approach to developing engagement goals is flawed for a number of reasons. For instance, developing a clear purpose and goals from the outset represents a top-down, prescriptive approach that may overlook or otherwise fail to identify the most pressing issues facing a community, or engender resentment at the engagement team’s view that they know what is best for them without even really knowing anything about them.

Conversely, developing a community engagement initiative in collaboration with community members as advocated by Dr. Sneed provides the stakeholders who have the most at stake with the opportunity to share their unique insights about their circumstances and needs. In addition, this approach also helps to forge the partnerships and networks that are needed to move a project forward. This open-ended strategy can also help promote the levels of trust that are needed to encourage greater participation by all community members. Notwithstanding these advantages, though, this approach also has its downsides, including most especially an overall lack of initial focus on which communities should be involved, the initial purpose of the engagement and a general idea about what needs to be accomplished.

The respective advantages and disadvantages suggest that an efficient, focused and effective community engagement project will identify the community of interest, the purpose of the initiative and a general idea about what goals need to be achieved from the outset. The research also showed, though, that it is also essential to ensure that community members have the opportunity to voice their opinions about these issues and share what they regard as the most pressing problems facing their community. In sum, flexibility is key to successful community engagement efforts.

Prompt 2: Is it possible to meaningfully engage with a community of which you are not a member? For instance, if you don’t know the local customs of a community and if you’ve never eaten the foods common to that community, can you meaningfully engage with people there?

The dictum that, “Anything is possible” certainly has its limits when it comes to engaging meaningfully with a community of which a researcher is not a member. Despite the challenges that are involved, it is possible. For example, according to Dr. Sneed, it is possible to learn about the local customs of a community by forging partnerships with community members, including those that are not specifically involved with a given engagement project, and to learn as much as possible by listening and observing rather than making assumptions about the community’s problems and how best to address them. In fact, outsiders may easily misinterpret activities and behaviors by local community members without developing a complete understanding of what is taking place (Dhillon & Thomas, 2019). Likewise, Dr. Sneed also recommends developing networks with community members who are in a position to provide timely guidance concerning local priorities and practices.

It is important to note, however, that engagement team members should avoid attempts to overly “fit in” with a local community, especially if there are significant cross-cultural differences involved. In this regard, Manders and Galvani (2015) emphasize that, “The realities of engaging with subjects in a culture and community quite different from one’s own requires mindfulness, reflexivity and an understanding of the defensiveness an ‘outsider’ may face” (p. 200). In fact, it is possible to “go overboard” when attempting to engage with local community members in ways that are offensive and demeaning. For instance, some American businesspeople have been criticized for acting “too Japanese” and offending their Japanese counterparts in the process. In other words, local community members intuitively recognize that outsiders are different and will expect them to not know everything about them and to act like Americans or Brits or Australians, for example. They will resent and resist any attempts by outsiders, however, to be lectured about their shortcomings, the taste or quality of their local foods, or their local customs.