World Cafés as a participatory approach to understanding research agendas in primary care with underserved communities: reflections, challenges and lessons learned

BACKGROUND: Certain communities are underserved by research, resulting in lower inclusion rates, under researched health issues and a lack of attention to how different communities respond to health interventions. Minoritised ethnic groups are often underserved by research and services. They experience health inequalities and face significant barriers to accessing health services. It is recognised that new approaches are needed to reach underserved communities and make research more relevant. The purpose of this work was to utilise World Cafés, a participatory method, to explore research agendas with diverse communities. METHODS: Two World Cafés were conducted as research agenda setting activities with individuals from minoritised ethnic communities in Bristol, UK. World Café 1 explored Black and Asian women’s perspectives about supporting mental health. World Café 2 with men from the Somali community, focused on prostate cancer. Community members co-developed the focus and questions of each World Café and were also instrumental in recruiting individuals to the sessions and facilitating discussions, including translation. Audio and written records were made of the discussions and from these key issues about each topic were identified, and a visual representation of the discussion was also generated. These were shared with participants to check for accuracy. RESULTS: Community members identified a range of issues that are important to them in relation to mental health and prostate cancer, including barriers to help seeking and accessing primary and secondary care, ideas for service improvements and a need for health information that is accessible and culturally relevant. CONCLUSIONS: World Cafés are a flexible method that can be successfully adapted for research agenda setting with individuals from minoritised ethnic communities. The role of community members in co-developing the focus of sessions, recruiting community members and co-facilitating sessions is crucial to this success. The discussions at both World Cafés provided a rich insight into the experiences of participants in relation to the topics mental health and prostate cancer and identified issues that are important to these communities that will be followed-up with communities, researchers and clinicians to co-develop research and service improvement strategies. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-023-00509-3.