During the 29th and 30th of July 2021, AHRI in collaboration with TDR held a community engagement guideline review workshop in the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia.
The guideline was designed with the goal to provide guidance on how to implement community engagement in AHRI’s research undertakings and thereby sought to ensure ethically and socially acceptable research processes in health researches involving human subjects. The guideline similarly aims to provide direction on implementing community engagement in every research cycle the institute initiates and thus was reviewed by a group of seasoned professionals with diverse backgrounds in the health sector as well as community engagement experts drawn from Addis Ababa University and Jimma University.
For a comprehensive review, the background to the guideline and presentation of the developed Community Guideline was first introduced. Following the introduction, for an in-depth review, the reviewers were splits into groups that entailed studies such as; Observational, Clinical Trial, Genomic Studies, and Emergency Focused studies, with each group presenting its review.
Lastly, in order to have an end-to-end guideline, the Community Engagement Guideline with regards to Institutionalization and functionality was briefed and discussed, with way forwards being presented by the reviewers and the guideline team.
