Center for Individualized Medicine

Community Advisory Board

The three-site Community Advisory Board Network is facilitated by Mayo Clinic's Biomedical Ethics Research Program. The program's associate director for public engagement and the coordinator of the Community Advisory Board Network work together to streamline connections across the Mayo Clinic enterprise.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine Community Advisory Board Network includes community members recruited to help guide the direction and conduct of research. Community advisory board members ensure that research aligns with the needs of their communities. In addition, they ground research in community values, helping investigators understand how their work may be perceived from the outside.

In turn, board members benefit from the opportunity to take part in research. The more they participate, the more knowledgeable they become about the fields of genomics and individualized medicine.

This learning process exemplifies one important aspect of community engagement, known as capacity building. Capacity building encompasses a broad range of activities that are used to foster community resources such as local infrastructure, knowledge, skills, ideas and shared experiences.

The orientation videos below are intended to build community members' capacity for engaging with the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine and the Mayo Clinic Biobank by increasing the members' understanding of the history and purpose of community advisory boards.