Building Research Integrity and Capacity (BRIC): An Educational Initiative to Increase Research Literacy among Community Health Workers and Promotores

While citizen science is gaining attention of late, for those of us involved in community-based public health research, community/citizen involvement in research has steadily increased over the past 50 years. Community Health Workers (CHWs), also known as Promotores de Salud in the Latino community, are critical to reaching underserved populations, where health disparities are more prevalent. CHWs/Promotores provide health education and services and may also assist with the development and implementation of community- and clinic-based research studies. Recognizing that CHWs typically have no formal academic training in research design or methods, and considering that rigor in research is critical to obtaining meaningful results, we designed instruction to fill this gap. We call this educational initiative “Building Research Integrity and Capacity” or BRIC. The BRIC training consists of eight modules that can be administered as a self-paced training or incorporated into in-person, professional development geared to a specific health intervention study. While we initially designed this culturally-grounded, applied ethics training for Latino/Hispanic community research facilitators, BRIC training modules have been adapted for and tested with non-Latino novice research facilitators. This paper describes the BRIC core content and instructional design process.