Planning and Recruiting a Community Advisory Board to Improve Care for Pediatric Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Among Hispanic Children

Importance: Pediatric lower urinary tract symptoms (pLUTS) are highly prevalent in neurologically healthy school-aged children. However, no evidence-based bladder health education programs are currently available to the general public, resulting in treatment for pLUTS being tightly linked to healthcare access. Disparities in seeking care and bladder symptoms related to bathroom access, cleanliness of bathroom facilities, and safety concerns for Hispanic adults have been identified from limited data. Building a Community Advisory Board (CAB) will facilitate investigation into the personal, interpersonal, community, and political factors impacting bladder health to inform the development of culturally relevant treatment programs and health policy initiatives.

Objective: To plan and recruit a 6-8 member CAB composed of community members important to the health and learning of children ages 5-10 years old that will identify key areas of pediatric bladder health to target for improvement in the local Hispanic community.

Design: By leveraging existing relationships with community members and collaborating with local community-based organizations (CBOs), we will recruit 6-8 CAB members: 2 parents, 1-2 community members nominated by community-based organizations (CBOs), 1-2 primary health care providers, 1 educator, and 1 community health worker (CHW). During the recruitment period, we will plan the format of the CAB using established theoretical frameworks and make decisions regarding: 1) meeting formats, and 2) evaluation metrics.

Participants: 6-8 stakeholders important to the health and learning of children ages 5-10 years old from Northern California’s Bay Area; 3 of the stakeholders will represent the local Hispanic community.

Results: 7 stakeholders were successfully recruited to join the CAB: 2 parents, 2 CHWs nominated by a CBO, 1 pediatric RN, and 2 pediatricians. Groups most challenging to recruit were CHWs, pediatricians, and educators, in order of decreasing difficulty. The CAB will meet quarterly on Zoom for 90 minutes and each member will receive an honorarium of $199/year. CAB meetings will be facilitated by Kan Lab members who will observe an open discussion among CAB members. The CAB will be evaluated using an end-of-meeting feedback survey, an annual CTSA Community Advisory Board Implementation survey, an annual report, meeting minutes, and a review of developed material. A meeting agenda and meeting minutes tracker were developed for the first CAB meeting, which took place on June 5, 2023.

Conclusion and Relevance: This is the first community-engaged approach for pediatric bladder health research that aims to improve delivery of care to Hispanic families. The lessons learned about planning and recruitment of a CAB can guide future community-engagement efforts investigating elements of the socio-ecological model (SEM) impacting the health of specific populations. Fostering academic-community relationships can be benefitted by developing clear definition and communication of partner roles and establishing mutual trust, transparency, and understanding between partners.