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. 2025 Aug;28(4):e70345.
doi: 10.1111/hex.70345.

A Proposal for Addressing Bioethical Concerns Along the 10-Step Framework for Community Engagement

Abdou Simon Senghor  1   2 , Michelle Medeiros  1   2 , Claudia Baquet  1   2 , Franklin Lance  3 , C Daniel Mullins  1   2
Affiliations

A Proposal for Addressing Bioethical Concerns Along the 10-Step Framework for Community Engagement

Abdou Simon Senghor et al. Health Expect. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Introduction: Building trust by applying an ethical deliberation approach can increase Black/African American participation in clinical and translational community-engaged research (CEnR).

Materials and methods: We provide examples of case studies from the literature to identify ethical issues associated with each step of the 10-Step Framework. To address these ethical issues, we applied an ethical deliberation approach embodied in three moments: (1) broadening and deepening the understanding of the situation and/or research scenarios, (2) envisioning action scenarios for more trustworthy research, and (3) coming to a judgement based on the comparative evaluation of scenarios.

Results: Examples of ethical issues identified include a lack of shared decision-making on proposed research topics, lengthy periods for data analysis and reporting that frustrate partners who want more timely results, and the lack of privacy, confidentiality and non-compliance with consent permissions for the dissemination of results.

Conclusion: We recommend tailoring the ethical deliberation approach to any project dealing with ethical issues and conducting empirical studies to test this approach in CEnR.

Patient or public contribution: As part of a community-engaged research (CEnR) project, this paper benefited from the contribution of F.L., a member of a community organisation, as a co-author. This author was actively involved in contributing to the review of ethical issues in community-engaged research and how the ethical deliberation approach can contribute to addressing these ethical issues.

Keywords: bioethics; collaboration; community‐engaged research; community–academic partnership; ethical deliberation; health equity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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