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Community Based Organizations & Partners

CSC offers community organizations facilitated dialogues, facilitator trainings, concern gatherings, and public forums that cultivate trust and support collaboration on science topics that matter most to the community.

Programs Planned and Facilitated by CSC:

Workshop to promote more equitable community research partnerships

This workshop raises awareness about power dynamics that can undermine research progress and equips research partners will skills they need to strengthen alliances by centering the needs of community members.

The Art of Dialogue Facilitation – A Skills Training  Workshop

This training equips community partners with in-depth dialogue facilitation tools that can foster curiosity and productive communication even in the face of disagreement on science and health issues.

Civic Science Roundtable Dialogues

These dialogues bring together community members who hold different perspectives and beliefs on complex and contentious science issues that have societal dimensions. Roundtable discussions on reproductive choice, vaccine decisions and genetically modified foods have supported viewpoint diversity to build more constructive communication.

Community dialogues on Human Health Equity

These facilitated conversations between community members, researchers, care providers and other stakeholders deepen understanding of the experiences of those most impacted by health inequities. Examples of past topics include participation in clinical trials, access to diabetes care, and raising awareness about rare diseases.

Stakeholder “concern gatherings” to build public engagement events from the community, for the community”

CSC leads a “concern gathering” process – a structured conversation where community members share their hopes and concerns on a science or health issue. CSC uses information gathered to plan engagement events tailored to community needs. CSC has led gatherings on barriers to mental health care, food justice, distrust of nutrition information, and more.

Programs that are Community-Led:

Training Series Supporting Dialogue Planning and Fcilitation by Community Members

Session 1: Understanding and framing the goals and intentions of dialogue: This session clarifies the purposes of your dialogue based on the constructive communication you want to support and the harmful communication you hope to prevent.
Session 2: Dialogue planning and designing: This planning process considers what past conversations have been like, who might view this topic as risky, who has been excluded from conversations in the past and what tensions exist on this topic.
Session 3: Skills for developing group agreements for “sufficient safety”: Trainees learn how to develop group agreements to guide dialogue to support productive and prevent harmful communication.
Session 4: Formulating dialogue questions: Trainees learn how to create dialogue questions that are accessible and culturally-relevant that will help dialogue participants share the complexities of their thinking about their topic.
Session 5: Inviting participants into dialogue: Trainees learn how to successfully invite and welcome participants holding diverse viewpoints, experiences and identities into dialogue.

Stakeholder “concern gathering” training

This workshop trains community members to plan and facilitate concern gatherings where participants share their hopes and concerns about issues impacting their communities. We offer a 3-step method that:

1- Guides trainees to facilitate these conversations
2-Teaches how to identify common concerns
3-Instructs how to best use the information gathered to plan community engagement programs.

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