Building and Maintaining Community Trust in COVID-19 Resources

Spanish Version: Cómo desarrollar y mantener la confianza de la comunidad en los recursos sobre COVID-19

Invest in long-term relationships with community partners.

• Invite communities to discuss their needs first.
  • Bringing COVID-19 testing sites to communities can build relationships and provide a chance to distribute COVID-19 information.
• Build on existing partnerships.
• Have flexible, community-driven meeting agendas.
  • Leave ample time for community members to speak

 Listen to concerns and learn community insights.

• Offer contact information (email address or phone number) where people can send questions or ideas.
• Plan events and conversations to get early community input.
• Notice and celebrate social media references to your project.
• Attend community events planned outside of your organization.
• Promote local community members as speakers at virtual town halls.

Acknowledge research challenges and mistakes.

• Be explicit about historical ethical offenses by academics, government scientists, and research organizations, such as past betrayals by researchers conducting medical experiments.
  • Explain how the research process has been improved to better protect people who take part in
    research, such as formal research study review and approval by Institutional Review Boards
    (IRBs).
• Leave time for open discussion, questions, and sharing emotions.
• Address how mistakes will be avoided in the future, such as through community collaboration.

Be transparent.

• Describe specific research plans to community members early in the process.
• Invite community leaders to co-host events and guide discussions together with your project team.
• Help community leaders to explain concepts such as the importance of testing, contact tracing, and
  vaccines.
• Offer programming—such as webinars or radio shows—that explains COVID-19 clinical research.
• Produce short (one-page) resource guides.
• Produce materials in a variety of languages.
• Work with accessible media outlets to share project news and don’t just post to your own website.