# Who CaREs - We do: Development of a community and researcher engagement program in translational medicine

## TL;DR

This paper describes a program that connects community members with researchers to improve translational medicine through collaboration.

## Contribution

The paper introduces the CaRE program, a novel community-researcher engagement model in translational research.

## Key findings

- The CaRE program includes governance, structure, and principles for community engagement.
- Community-researcher partnerships have been central to the program since 2021.
- Participants' characteristics and satisfaction were analyzed over three years.

## Abstract

There are increasing calls from research funders for the inclusion of community members at all stages of the research cycle. However, meaningful community engagement in translational research may be challenging to achieve, establish, and maintain.

The Community and Researcher Engagement (CaRE) program for translational research was developed at an Australian University in response to this need. In this manuscript, we provide an overview of the CaRE program including its governance, structure and underlying principles. In addition, we detail the community and researcher partnerships (pairing service) which have been the core activity of the program since its launch in 2021. We further report on the characteristics of people who have engaged with the program, as well as their experience and satisfaction over a three-year period.

The development of the CaRE program provides an important contribution to the evolving landscape of community engagement in translational research.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-026-00843-2.