We engage patients, caregivers, and sites as true research partners to unlock insights that transform study design, strengthen community trust, and deliver findings that truly matter to the people they're meant to serve.
Richer Partnerships, Better Trials
At the DCRI, meaningful engagement is essential to advancing health. We have a long-standing commitment to engaging with patients, caregivers, sites, community organizations, and other partners—ensuring our research reflects site- and patient-informed perspectives, that strengthen feasibility, and reduce burden.
Recognizing that engagement and communication are inextricably linked, our Research Communication and Engagement (RC&E) team leads a strategic, in-house approach to partner collaboration. At the heart of this effort is the DCRI Research Together™ program, a structured and scalable model that integrates lived experience into every stage of the research process.
Research Together™ means that relationships are bidirectional – everyone learns from each other and everyone gains value. The following principles guide these partnerships to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes:
- People come first. Always.
- We recognize that people are embedded in dynamic family and community frameworks that we honor and respect across the continuum of life care.
- People are our partners in research; not our subjects. We believe in taking every opportunity to co-learn. We engage participants, families, and community members in our research design, conduct, oversight, and dissemination activities.
- We are transparent and trustworthy. We communicate to research participants how valuable their contributions are to science and medicine. We take the time to thank research participants, update them on study progress, and share our findings in language understandable to everyone.
- We create value. We work to return results in a responsible and meaningful manner and maximize what can be learned by sharing data with other researchers.
- We are not transactional in our approach. We encourage and incentivize collaborations with people and communities that look past the end of a project or last study visit. We create opportunities to continue co-learning and working in partnership with participants, families, and community members to improve health outcomes.
Engagement Across the Clinical Research Lifecycle
From study concept through post-approval, we collaborate with patients, caregivers, and sites to:
- Enhance the participant's, caregiver's, and site's experience.
- Identify and reduce barriers to participation.
- Strengthen recruitment and retention strategies.
- Enhance study design.
- Build and sustain trust in research.
- Increase the relevance and impact of study findings for the communities served.
How We Do It
The DCRI Research Together™ program provides sponsors and investigators access to DCRI thought leaders to develop, pilot, and scale successful engagement models, methods, and technologies. Renee Leverty, BSN, MA, leads this program and is supported by a team of engagement liaisons, communicators, and clinical project leads. Research Together engagement experts assist with the development and execution of robust, multifaceted engagement plans that utilize customized strategies and tools, including:
- Co-development of engagement strategies that align with study goals, therapeutic areas, and participant populations.
- Support for protocol design that enhances operational efficiency, reduces participant burden, and improves recruitment and retention.
- Fit-for-purpose engagement models, methods, and technologies tailored to the study's population, geography, and complexity.
- Community engagement that is scalable to local, regional, and national levels, leveraging trusted messengers, advocacy groups, and community-based organizations.
- Enhanced study planning, retention, and dissemination informed by lived experiences to improve feasibility, understand mutual value, and ensure meaningful return of results.
From Concept to Culture: How Research Together™ Transformed DCRI's Approach
In 2017, DCRI leadership recognized a gap: while individual project teams made commendable efforts to engage patients, there was no structured roadmap to operationalize engagement across the full study lifecycle. Using the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative's Patient Group Engagement recommendations as a foundation, DCRI developed Research Together™, a program built on the principle that people aren't just participants in research, they're partners in creating it. The results? Improved recruitment and retention, earlier patient input in grant proposals, and a fundamental culture shift in how DCRI conducts clinical research.
Partner Engagement Leadership
