Our Purpose
Healthy growth and well-being are important to all communities and healthy behaviors and early experiences promote well-being. Doctors and researchers also often measure body weight as a marker of growth, especially in research that compares the impact of two or more programs or policies (“comparative effectiveness research” or CER). But focusing on body weight can negatively impact children’s mental health. Centering whole-child growth better promotes well-being in our communities. To improve how we study whole child growth, this work followed a community-engaged approach in partnership with local communities of color. Together we worked to:

1. Understand how families think about whole child growth and
2. Create a plan for studying and improving whole child growth.

We hope this work is an opportunity for community, research, and healthcare to join us in future work that centers children and is grounded in culture.

Our Approach
To do this work, we convened a core team with members from community-led organizations Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) and the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), and healthcare and research organizations the University of Minnesota and HealthPartners. Our core team met regularly from Spring 2023 to Spring 2024 and engaged a broader stakeholder group of 25 parents and 13 researchers and healthcare professionals to learn about CER and share their voices in the development of our research agenda during a Fall and Spring meeting series.

Through this work we embodied the PCORI Engagement Principles of Reciprocal Relationships, Co-Learning Partnerships, and Transparency, Honesty, and Trust. These were foundational to developing shared norms for our time together including a commitment to curiosity, listening to one another, and creating a safe and brave space together. We also evaluated the quality of our engagement work throughout the process using tools like surveys to gather feedback and make real-time improvements. This approach allowed us to create an agenda to guide the way we will do CER and other types of research together going forward.