Editorial: A Special Issue Focused on Participatory Dissemination With the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders

The intellectual lineage of this special issue traces back to JPRM's 2025 collaboration with us as representatives of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program, which produced JPRM's first IRL special issue focused on community-centered research practice.Within that collection, participatory dissemination emerged as one of the most compelling and generative themes, present across projects, yet insufficiently examined on its own terms.What became increasingly clear was that the field lacked a dedicated scholarly space to interrogate and examine participatory dissemination on its own terms: its methods, tensions, forms, ethics, and politics.To our knowledge, no peer-reviewed journal has dedicated a special issue exclusively to participatory dissemination as a subject of inquiry.While the term appears across the scholarly literature, a clear, citable, and stand-alone definition of "participatory dissemination" as a discrete conceptual and methodological domain remains notably absent.This special issue aims to address that gap.In doing so, it marks a potential field-defining moment, not merely by gathering exemplary work, but by asserting that participatory dissemination is a coherent, consequential, and undertheorized domain within participatory research methods that merits sustained scholarly attention.We offer the following working definition to anchor this issue and invite continued refinement by the field: Participatory dissemination refers to the intentional, collaborative process through which research knowledge is created, interpreted, shared, and mobilized with -rather than for -communities throughout the entire arc of community-engaged research.Unlike conventional dissemination, which is typically treated as a terminal and concluding activity culminating in academic publication of the outcomes, participatory dissemination is embedded from the outset.It helps shape research questions, documents the evolving research process, informs ongoing interpretation, and develops alongside community relationships, priorities, and action.Its forms are diverse, adaptive, and community-responsive, extending well beyond peerreviewed scholarship to include community forums, policy briefs, visual