Central Data Catalog

Stakeholders are individuals, organisations or communities who are responsible for, or affected by, the processes or outcome of the research [1]. Stakeholder engagement (SE) in health research has the potential
to inform quality improvements by incorporating multiple perspectives of the stakeholders beyond the
traditional research team [2]. Increasingly, funders are acknowledging the benefits of SE on research outcomes
and mandating it on grant applications [2]. It can help to improve the health, knowledge and well-being of
communities by decreasing the ambiguity surrounding research findings and increasing early acceptance of the
research findings [3]. Early SE could help obtain funding and facilitate in reducing the gap between research
to policy by creating research that is of benefit and interest to numerous stakeholders [4,5].
Current descriptions and evaluations of SE, highlight the need for establishing
more SE process methods [6]. Redundancies, lack of knowledge to establish
priorities based on stakeholders needs, inadequate reporting of study-results
and ambiguous study designs, result in the wastage of 85% of investment in
health and biomedical research every year [7,8]. Although financial and theoretical support for research demands SE, its impact has not been well-recognised or established [2]. Moreover, the terminologies, guidelines and concepts for reporting SE process and outcomes in the health research provide
little published evidence on the best SE practices [2].
Despite the positive potential impacts of SE, limited information is available on SE processes especially within
a South Asian context [4,9]. The concept of SE is well recognised in high-income countries and researchers
from low-middle-income-countries (LMICs) are slowly acknowledging the importance of conducting meaningful SE [1,4]. In this article we discuss the SE process employed at the Vadu Rural Health Program (VRHP),
a department of KEM Hospital Research Centre Pune (KEMHRC), when conducting community-based public
health research in rural areas, and describe our experiences and challenges in conducting SE activities.