E2. IGNITE: Building Inclusive, Healthy, Empowered Communities
E2.03 - IGNITE: Radical Welcome in Community-engaged Partnerships with Multiply Marginalized Urban Residents
Thursday, April 23, 2026
2:05 PM - 2:15 PM PST
Location: Parlor, Ballroom Level
Area of Responsibility: Area VII: Leadership and Management Keywords: Community-Based Participatory Research@@@Health Equity@@@Partnerships and Coalitions, Subcompetencies: 7.1.3 Involve partners and stakeholders throughout the health education and promotion process in meaningful and sustainable ways., 7.1.5 Evaluate relationships with partners and stakeholders on an ongoing basis to make appropriate modifications. Research or Practice: Research
Faculty University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
Describe the radical welcome engagement restoration model that seeks to strengthen partnerships and build trust with communities that have been harmed by research.
Assess capacity for transformational partnerships with communities to co-produce solutions to address health inequities and increase participation in health and health -decision making.
Demonstrate how radical welcome expands knowledge production and strengthens communty agency in health research.
Brief Abstract Summary: Learn strategies to address engagement suppression and facilitate full participation of systematically excluded persons in research partnerships that seek to improve community well-being through the co-production of knowlegde.
Detailed abstract description:
Purpose: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) holds promise for addressing health inequities. However, full engagement of people harmed by systemic injustices is challenging due to power imbalances and inequities in resources. We describe how a CBPR partnership of clinicians, researchers, and persons with histories of incarceration, addiction, homelessness and sex work – uses radical welcome as a framework and an ethical practice to facilitate agency and full engagement of multiply marginalized urban adults.
Methods: We collected through participatory ethnography, focus groups and individual interviews. We performed our analysis using inductive coding in a series of iterative meaning-making processes that involved all partners. Our analyses focused on operationalizing radical welcome as practice, and how it can help minimize and address conflicts related to power, resource, role and time imbalances.
Results: We defined and measured six phases of the radical welcome framework: 1) passionate invitation, 2) radical welcome, 3) authentic sense of belonging, 4) co-creation of roles, 5) prioritization of issues, and 6) collective action. We created a guide to assessing progression across these phases, as well as a 32-item radical welcome instrument to help CBPR partners anticipate and overcome challenges to engagement. Thes phases are anecdotes to factors that might make academics and practitioners to not be perceived as trustworthy by lived experience experts. We discuss how key principles of radical welcome can help rebuild trust.
Discussion: The radical welcome guide initiates open communication about uncertainties, expectations, power dynamics and resource management that might challenge equity within the partnership. It also provides ongoing opportunities for anyone to interrupt harmful patterns that suppress engagement without delay, centering those with least institutional power. Ultimately, practitioners and scholars interested in CBPR partnerships with multiply marginalized communities should spend considerable time to first understand how their personal connections to injustices, and then build authentic relationships needed for partners to respond positively to a passionate invitation to work together. The phases of radical welcome indicate what trust and full participation in health and health -decision making look like, especially from the perspectives of context and lived experience experts.
