We prioritize community-initiated and community-engaged studies where community representatives play a leading role and work in partnership with an experienced research team that will help to design and carry out the pilot research activities associated with the proposed project. The CBO-research partnership should represent a reciprocal relationship that values community knowledge and scientific knowledge equally in designing systems alignment interventions and in carrying out the research to test these strategies.

S4A is a research program that places a high priority on producing scientifically rigorous and credible evidence. We encourage partnerships between community-based organizations and external research institutions to ensure that your research team has the necessary scientific expertise, systems knowledge, implementation capacity, and community expertise to carry out the proposed research. An external research partner can provide a neutral and independent perspective on the system alignment strategy and can provide protections against some common sources of research bias such as social desirability bias and motivated reasoning bias. Additionally, an external research partner may allow your research study to achieve higher levels of credibility with external audiences, and avoid perceptions of research bias, lack of neutrality, or conflicts of interest. Finally, an external research partner may allow for efficient division of labor by allowing one partner to focus primarily on implementation of the system alignment strategy, while allowing the other partner to focus primarily on implementation of research activities. Of course, all partners should play active and equitable roles in the research design, interpretation of results, and translation of results into actionable strategies for dismantling and disrupting systemic racism.