CCTST Publication: Assessing CEnR Impact with the TSBM Framework

The CCTST Community and Stakeholder Engagement team successfully published an article in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science titled, “Using the translational science benefits model to evaluate the impact of community-engaged programs”.

The study utilized the Translational Science Benefits Model (TSBM) for assessing impact of three CCTST community-engaged research programs (CEnR).

The TBSM is a framework designed to help public health and clinical scientists demonstrate the impact of their work in the real world. The model identifies 30 benefits of clinical and translational science in four domains: Clinical, Community, Economic, and Policy.

Progress reports from the three CCTST CEnR programs—the Community Leaders Institute (CLI; n = 170), Community Health Grant (CHG; n = 82), and Partnership Development Grant (PDG; n = 21)—submitted between 2010 and 2023 were analyzed by three reviewers using the TSBM. As anticipated, these programs most frequently demonstrated community and public health benefits, with additional economic, policy, and clinical impacts also identified.

Adopting frameworks such as the TSBM may help standardize how CEnR program impacts are evaluated and enable more meaningful comparisons across CTSAs. Future research that follows the influence of CEnR programs on health and social systems could offer deeper insight into their long-term contributions.