Community engagement helps to bridge the gap between academic health institutions and the real world.
If you are doing research or designing programs that might directly impact people, your work could be community-engaged. Community engagement is an essential part of healthcare and research. Community engagement ensures that the perspectives, experiences, well-being, and needs of community members and patients are amplified when conducting research, promoting public health, or creating policy.
View this page for resources and best practices for paying community partners for their collaborative work on research projects.
View this page for opportunities and resources to help learners get involved with community engagement.
These community board resources are a comprehensive resource designed to support research teams in building, managing, and concluding a CAB.
Language Access Resources hub for tools, guidance, and best practices that support equitable, culturally responsive research communication, including translation and interpretation support, community-informed consent language recommendations, AI translation guidance, and materials to help research teams improve accessibility and participant engagement across diverse communities.
Scroll down to see the full list of resources for researchers, learners and educators.
UCSF ASPIRE Project Recommendations
The Accelerating Systematic Stakeholder Patient, and Institution Research Engagement (ASPIRE) final recommendations aim to improve structures and processes for community-engaged research at UCSF
Featured Resource: AAMC's Principles of Trustworthiness
The Principles of Trustworthiness Toolkit is designed to help institutions earn their community's trust by demonstrating they are worthy of it. Published by the AAMC Center for Health Justice, the toolkit offers a structured, yet flexible approach to building genuine partnerships rooted in humility, accountability, and long-term commitment.
The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership
This Spectrum of Community Engagement charts a pathway to strengthen and transform partnerships. The spectrum can be used to describe and deepen community-academic collaborations.
Report: Community Input into the UCSF Informed Consent Form
In 2025, the CTSI Research Action Group for Equity (RAGE) partnered with the UCSF Institutional Review Board (IRB) to solicit community feedback on the Informed Consent Form (ICF) Template. The linked report summarizes the feedback gathered during 3 listening sessions and enumerates recommendations from our community partners. Many of the recommendations were adopted in the ICF released in May 2026.
Este video es un ejemplo de investigadores que trabajan con la comunidad para abogar por cambios de polices.
This video is an example of researchers working with the community to advocate for policy change. The HERE with Community project explored barriers between research institutions, community health centers, and, by extension, their patient populations in the Central Valley.
Linguistica Interpreting and Translation, LLC, is a translation firm based in California that offers a range of interpretation and translation services. They are a registered vendor in BearBuy, but are not endorsed by CTSI or UCSF.
The Language Bank offers comprehensive language interpretation and translation services for UCSF research and clinical services. They are registered as a vendor in BearBuy and have been utilized by many research project teams and by CTSI. Click on the link to view their rate sheet.
In 2025, the CTSI Research Action Group for Equity (RAGE) partnered with the UCSF Institutional Review Board (IRB) to solicit community feedback on the Informed Consent Form (ICF) Template.
This document provides a sample invoice template for UCSF researchers to use when compensating Community Advisory Board (CAB) members.
This document is provided as an example of a survey that research and project teams can use when recruiting potential Community Advisory Board (CAB) members.
This document is provided as an example survey for research and project teams to use when recruiting potential Community Advisory Board (CAB) members. It is intended to serve as a template and reference.
If you’re evaluating a single Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting and not the overall experience, the goal is to capture immediate feedback on clarity, engagement, respect, and usefulness. You want questions that are quick, repeatable, and actionable.
This survey is provided as an example to help teams reflect on Community Advisory Board (CAB) members’ overall experiences at the end of your CAB. It is intended as a reference, and you are encouraged to adapt the questions to fit your goals.
This is the "After" section of the CTSI CAB Toolkit. This section describes how to close a Community Advisory Board (CAB). This includes sample evaluation questions.
This is the "During" Section of the CTSI CAB Toolkit. This section explains how to facilitate Community Advisory Board (CAB) Meetings.