Great comments everyone!
I think Steven makes a great point. Do your organizations understand who stakeholders are? From your definitions it seems that many of the research groups limit the idea of stakeholder to potential participants or organizations that work on HIV related issues. Stakeholders are people who can influence or will be impacted by the trial. This definition may include individuals who oppose the trial! It is important to think broadly about who and how to engage.
One of the most important things to remember about stakeholder engagement is that it is NOT recruitment. High and fast recruitment is a sign of successful engagement, but not the same thing. In fact, good engagement may show that a trial cannot move forward because of a lack of community support.
Clever made an interesting point about researchers not trusting community because they think they might be their to destroy the research. It brings up an important point in my mind that building trust is not just from the research center out. Community must also build trust with the research staff!
I’m really interested in hearing from more voices about how their research teams feel about stakeholder engagement!
