Quarterly Update: Reducing Administrative Barriers to Community-Engaged Research at Duke
PERC Wants to Hear from You!
PERC is committed to tackling barriers to enable meaningful relationships with community partners. Help us help you!
Tell us what challenges you’re facing. Your experiences help us design better tools and stronger support for community-engaged research
WORKING GROUP UPDATES
The PERC Working Group prioritized issues and formed groups targeting specific areas impacting community-engaged research.
Community Advisory Boards
A newly formed working group is endeavoring to create resources to share best practices for creating and managing community advisory boards. The group is currently working to address the fact that many of the same people are tapped for multiple advisory boards at Duke.
Compensation
The PERC initiative partnered with Duke Finance to qualify community partners for Net 0 day payments for check requests and purchase orders.
Language Access and Resources
Research teams may face challenges engaging with speakers of diverse language preference for various reasons. To better understand the potential barriers and potential solutions, the Language Access working group has developed a slate of relevant questions within the PERC Administrative Barriers survey. Please complete and share the survey if these are challenges for you: Language Access and Resources Survey
MOUs and Partnership Agreements
The working group is exploring various solutions to streamline the MOU and agreement process. This may include the development of a standardized checklist for research teams to use when working with contract offices to develop clear and reasonable language. In addition, the group is exploring a clear escalation process for agreements that become stalled.
Additional Working Group Updates
For a full listing of issue-focused working groups and their outcomes please see PERC's progress page.
Priorities for Spring/ Summer 2026
- Standardize a process for escalating issues impacting community engaged research that are beyond the scope of standard process improvements
- Continue developing resources addressing administrative barriers for community engaged research
- Expand communication outreach efforts to learn more about the barriers that faculty and research staff experience as well as share the resources that are available to provide support
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
PERC Resource Rollout
PERC has created a suite of resources dedicated to community engaged research including: a new page in myRESEARCHpath, Community of Practice dedicated to community engaged research and a useful guide that aggregates guidance and resources to help Duke researchers and administrators navigate the complexities of community engaged research.
Learn more about resources developed by PERC on the PERC Resources page.
COMMUNICATIONS & ENGAGEMENT
If you are interested in PERC presenting at a meeting you host, please contact us.
If you have administrative complications related to community engaged research, questions about the CER initiative, or would like to get involved, please contact us.
The team is interested in addressing and deeply understanding the hurdles our community members, and our researchers and scholars, experience when forging these important relationships.