Applying Community-Based Participatory Research principles during COVID-19: Lessons learned

Introduction: As countries adapted their disaster responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa responded with an alert-level risk approach based on epidemiological principles that impacted all societal levels. We explored the everyday experiences of people in Cape Town whose basic needs were met and could report on the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic control. Gaining insight into their perspectives contributes to knowledge that informs policies and practices to manage future public health crises.
Goals and Methods (research design, techniques for data collection and analysis): Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles guided the design and a series of facilitated dialogues with 18 research participants. The thematic analysis was deepened through two colloquiums with members of an overarching research consortium as well as a participant-checking workshop.
Results (obtained or expected): Applying CBPR principles during a pandemic created unforeseen challenges to overcome in terms of recruiting participants and conducting the interviews. Yet, innovative strategies like using different types of technology resulted in facilitating various types of creative data collection processes and dialogues that included in-person and digital data collection methods. Managing the multi-stakeholder team and participants required a pragmatic agile approach to the entire research process. Lessons learned during the process included the importance of project management and leadership throughout the research process.
Conclusions: The results of the study confirmed the interconnectedness of the functioning of our society and the impact of severing those connections through hard lock-down measures. Conducting pure participatory action research under normal circumstances poses challenges. Applying this method during a pandemic increased the challenges but forced the team to be creative and agile during the research process. The contribution of community-based participatory research is invaluable as it provides unique results from a collective perspective. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to apply the method to develop agility.