A scoping review on the key elements and effects of cardiovascular disease management programmes based on community-based participatory research

Background. This scoping review aims to analyse the literature on community based participatory research (CBPR) -based cardio vascular disease (CVD) management programmes, examining the key elements of their development and implementation and exploring their effectiveness. Methods. This study is based on the scoping review methodology, consisted of six stages: 1) identifying the research question; 2) identifying relevant studies—search strategy; 3) study selection; 4) charting the data; 5) collating, summarising, and reporting the results; and 6) consultation exercise. The electronic databases used for the literature search were PubMed, Cochrane, and CINAHL. The search period was from 4 March to 3 April 2020. We selected studies that: 1) were published after 2000; 2) targeted community residents over the age of 18; and 3) proposed a CBPR-based CVD management programme, described its development process, or evaluated its effects based on its application. The data were extracted independently by two researchers according to the standardised form. Results. Among the key elements of such programmes, there were many cases in which community organisations played the leading role in establishing partnerships and cases in which a decision-making committee was formed. Regarding the application of the CBPR principles, community partners participated only in executing the research and not in the process of analyzing and interpreting research results. In addition, In all six RCT studies, the experimental groups showed significantly positive effects compared to the control groups. Conclusion. It is necessary to develop strategies to improve the criteria based on which CBPR principles cannot be implemented during the development and implementation of a CBPR-based CVD management programme. In addition, more attempts to verify the effectiveness of high-quality research methodology should be made when evaluating the effectiveness of programmes.