**Published in Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP) 17.4. All rights reserved.**
ABSTRACT
Background: The pandemic has had dire consequences on community-engaged research.
Objectives: We describe research challenges imposed by the pandemic on our breast and cervical cancer intervention study with Southeast Asian immigrant women, and strategies used to maintain study continuity.
Methods: The pandemic’s impact on the research team, recruitment and retention of participants, study design, and strategies executed to tackle these issues are described.
Results: Strategies employed to address research challenges include implementing COVID-19 protocols for conducting community research; recruiting participants online, outside of the planned community locations, and through social media; and enhancing the study design by using respondent-driven sampling. In addition to educating communities about early cancer detection, we also provided information and resources about COVID-19, including transmission mitigation, testing, and vaccination.
Conclusions: Continuing to engage the communities in our study is critical to our long-term goal of eliminating cancer screening disparities in Southeast Asian immigrant communities.