Community Engagement
Community Engagement Tips
These community engagement strategies can help you better understand the needs of the people in your community, including those who have been historically underserved.
Expand your definition of subject matter experts (SME) beyond clinicians and researchers. Other SMEs who can help select meaningful indicators and data collection tools and analyze your initial results should include:
- Those who understand the history of substance use response and policy and their impacts
- People with lived and living substance use experience
- People who know how to build trust and long-term partnerships with different communities
Engage community early and often. Engagement rooted in ongoing, long-term relationship-building will help you avoid ineffective and/or harmful metrics. Identify and include those community members who have been missing from previous conversations.
Practice transparency and engage community members who may be impacted by the data collection process early in the project development phase. This step can help to reduce the possibility of harmful unintended consequences.
Train staff on engaging with community partners to help you define the limits of the project's scope and to provide feedback on when and how to use information you collect.
Center the work on the people you are serving. They can help you identify the most effective services for their community, define how indicators should be examined and understand the limitations of available data.
Use person-centered language and remember that words matter. You'll make mistakes and language will change—teams should be open to regularly evaluating language in the work.
Are you sharing overdose data back with the community?
Sharing data back with the community and participants is essential. When gathering data for program use, sharing data with your participants or clients builds trust and a sense of community.
University of Washington Supporting Harm Reduction Program (SHaRP) has developed strategies, tactics and tips to share data with communities in a way that demonstrates respect and builds trust. Their guidance focuses on the importance of sharing findings and providing contextual information to help participants with understanding the information. They recommend establishing standards for data sharing with participants, protecting participants and staff, prioritizing communication with participants and becoming familiar with your audience. Considerations to avoid causing harm to participants, staff and communities when sharing data are also provided.
Overdose Measures Matter is not a definitive guide to how to achieve fair overcomes in overdose prevention. Historically, substance use practices have not worked for everyone and policies have unjustly and disproportionately penalized certain populations. Program implementers, community conveners and funders must continue to work together to improve access to services and quality of care for people who use drugs and those who have been historically underserved by overdose prevention efforts.
Data Collection Practices
The success of your data collection hinges on respect. Anyone doing this work must respect all people who have lived and living experience with drug use.
Key Strategies for Unbiased Data Collection Practices Include:
- Consult and collaborate with community partners. Program implementers and community conveners can help to identify urgent issues as they relate to substance use and other social and health needs. Ongoing engagement can provide context on how, when and where to engage.
- Gather input to select indicators. Engaging with people working in overdose prevention who have first-hand experience with drug use may help you to identify and track indicators that are most relevant to a community. One way to do this is to hold listening sessions and focus groups to decide on which indicators to use.
- Aggregate and disaggregate data with community input. One way to use these indicators is to examine data using demographic categories that mirror a community. Deciding which categories to use requires community input and guidance from people with lived and living experience. This is an important way to avoid inadvertently misrepresenting a community or obscuring disparities.
- To make your work more impactful, engage meaningfully with communities to understand their unique characteristics, ensure effective outcomes and prevent punitive or harmful unintended consequences.