Intentional Inclusion of Navigator Scientists to Enhance the Relevance and Sustainability of Peer Support Interventions

Abstract

We are approaching a quarter of a century of enshrined civil rights legislation that mandates full and equal participation of people with disabilities across all aspects of society. Yet, the 61 million Americans living with disabilities continue to experience well-documented barriers to health, healthcare, and community living at the nexus of disability status, social determinants of health and intersectional minoritized identities. In our increasingly interconnected world, there is a critical need to diversify our approach to science and intervention to break down systemic barriers to care and community participation. mENTER is a 12-month mHealth-enabled peer support intervention aimed at people with acquired physical disabilities transitioning from in-patient rehabilitation to independent living. This evidence-informed behavioral intervention was conceptualized using community-based participatory approaches between academic rehabilitation researchers, disability rights advocates at a Center for Independent Living, and a Medicaid managed care organization. As the project has evolved so too has our approach to transdisciplinary science and the ways to intentionally increase engagement of people with lived experience to promote both program relevance and the quality of the science. Specifically, we created a "navigator scientist" approach that embeds people with disabilities as co-designers, interventionists, and evaluators of the mENTER training, intervention, and technology infrastructure to support this complex behavioral intervention. In this presentation, we will describe the strategies that we have used to embed navigator scientists in our transdisciplinary team that includes rehabilitation researchers, behavioralists and implementation scientists, and computer scientists. We will emphasize strengths, challenges, and creative possibilities inherent in this approach.