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Research at the Speed of Trust by The Native Center for Behavioral Health

The Native Center for Behavioral Health embarked on a research guide project to assist researchers working with Indigenous communities. Initially conceived as a pocket guide, it evolved into a comprehensive 32-page book, shaped by collaborative efforts within the organization. “Research at the Speed of Trust: A Guide for Researchers and Native Communities” went on to win the 2023 Award of Excellence in Marketing Achievement: Social Impact – Institutional. We spoke with the project lead and communications manager, Meg Schneider, to get a behind the scenes look at their team and process.

What inspired the direction for the guide?
The Native Center for Behavioral Health provides resources, training, and technical assistance to behavioral health providers working with Indigenous populations.  The research guide began as a technical assistance request from some prevention professionals we work with. Our prevention program coordinator, Allison Baez, PhD, (Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation), and one of our graduate student research assistants began looking into best practices for conducting research with Native communities. Initially, we were thinking the final product would be a pocket guide or brochure.

Further discussion among the team made it clear that we needed to rethink our approach if we were going to create a useful publication. We made a list of all the topics we thought should be included and decided we needed a two-pronged structure: one for researchers who want to conduct research with Indigenous communities, and one for tribal groups on ways to ensure that any research they approve benefits their community and protects both the community and individual members from potential harm.

Tell us about the structure of the team that contributed to the guide and all the research.
One great advantage to having a variety of behavioral health expertise housed in one place is that we can easily collaborate with our colleagues on major (and even minor) projects across all program areas. We also have a fabulous team of professionals with decades of experience in conducting research with Native communities and in academic settings. The team that built this guide included:

I (Meg) effectively became the project lead, collecting information from the contributors and figuring out where that information belonged in the guide. But it was absolutely a full-team effort throughout the process. We lost count of the number of emails and Teams messages with questions like, “Are we including X? What about Y?” or asking for a fresh set of eyes on a section of the guide. And that was before we got into the design aspects, when there were several new rounds of “How can we make this information more visual?”, “What do you think about this?”, and “Should we use something else here?”

To be honest, that back-and-forth is one of the most fun aspects of the creative process at the Native Center. And it always results in something everyone can take pride in.

Which aspects of the project are you most proud of?
I am most proud of the additional work the team was willing to put into this project to make it such a substantial publication. It would have been easy to do a quick, superficial pocket guide or brochure and cross the project off our to-do list. But as we discussed the topic more, the entire team felt we had an obligation to deliver something more substantive, and they were happy to put in the extra effort to make it so.

How does this project represent the Native Center for Behavioral Health’s creative ethos?
Our philosophy is that Native communities are the experts on what they need and what works for them, which means asking questions and listening well. This extends to the creative team as well. Whenever a project comes to us, we always ask the basic questions: Who is the audience? What do you want the audience to take away? What do you want to accomplish with this project? We don’t want to just tick a box saying we’ve done this or that; we want to make sure we’re creating things that will be useful for those we aim to serve.

In the case of the research guide, listening to the answers to those questions led to additional questions, more listening, more questions, through several cycles, and that’s how the pocket guide we initially envisioned became a 32-page book.

View the Full Research Guide →


We’re excited to celebrate 30 years at The Communicator Awards. What aspects of communication are timeless to you?
Effective communication is always about understanding your audience: what they want, what they need, and how they absorb and use the information you’re trying to convey. I love that the Native Center’s standard protocol is asking those we serve what would be most useful to them rather than saying “We have this; use it!” This dialogue opens up whole new vistas for us in how we develop and deliver resources, and we can be confident that the final product will be of value to the intended audience.

 

Are you creating social impact projects like The Native Center for Behavioral Health? There’s still time to enter your work before the Extended Entry Deadline on March 15th, 2024.

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