The community's voice in research

We congratulate CMAJ for inviting representatives from an Aboriginal community to put forward the community's reflections and recommendations on the basis of their experiences with a previous research project.1 The Special Working Group of the Cree Regional Child and Family Services Committee wrote an eloquent commentary outlining how research can be strengthened through knowledge of community history and traditions and by incorporating local expertise and previous experience; they also stressed the importance of the local language and family or group decision-making. They proposed that researchers undertake intensive community consultations with health and social service personnel before undertaking research projects. In return, health care workers would need to recognize that their responsibilities include such consultations.

As a group with expertise in community - based research whose members include both Aboriginal representatives and researchers, we encourage the use of community-based participatory research. We developed a document that was accepted as a policy statement by the North American Primary Care Research Group to promote this method of research.2^,3 Community-based participatory research promotes the development of researcher–community partnerships. As a team the researchers and community representatives design the research (i.e., identify the nature of the problem, develop the most appropriate intervention and identify the best ways to assess the impact of the intervention), implement the intervention and evaluation, analyze and interpret the data and disseminate the results. In addition, it is our experience that these partnerships are greatly strengthened by jointly negotiated written ethical guidelines that outline the obligations of all team members and that promote sharing of decision-making and power. These guidelines help to maximize community knowledge and capacity building and to sustain programs after the funding for the project ends, which are the ultimate goals of all community-based health research.