Community Research Fellows Program

The Community Research Fellows (CRF) program aims to eliminate barriers to patient engagement in research at Yale by developing a network of community stakeholders in Connecticut equipped to partner with Yale investigators. Despite the resources invested in research and patient care, these medical breakthroughs have had little impact on the complex health outcomes that continue to disproportionately affect communities of color. The CRF program is designed to create a network of residents with knowledge, skills, and confidence for a successful partnership with researchers.

In partnership with the Community Alliance for Research Engagement (CARE), we embed area residents within research teams to provide community expertise and perspectives on research projects. CARE is co-located within the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and Southern CT State University. The CRF program builds the knowledge, skills, and confidence of Connecticut residents to enable mutually beneficial research partnerships. Investigator teams benefit from citizen scientists’ familiarity with community experiences that may build scholarly work, catalyze future collaborations, and assist with dissemination of findings. CARE and Yale team members train CRFs on stakeholder engaged research, patient-centered outcomes research, and catchment area cancer burden. The program consists of 13 training sessions, and Fellows devote a minimum of 5 hours per week in a 9-month placement with a research team. Along with CARE, we also train host research teams and meet bi-weekly with host sites to share successes and identify support needs.