Feasibility of integrating Cultural Consensus Modeling into community-engaged research: lessons from rural Arizona

Abstract

This study examines the feasibility of integrating Cultural Consensus Modeling (CCM)—a structured anthropological method for identifying shared cultural beliefs—into community-engaged public health research within the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) framework. In collaboration with the RCMI Community Expert Board at Northern Arizona University, researchers developed a mixed-methods questionnaire to identify community assets, challenges, and health priorities across rural, border, and underserved communities in Arizona. Guided by the Vitalyst Health Foundation’s “Elements of a Healthy Community” framework, the instrument was co-developed and pilot-tested in English and Spanish. Over a six-month period, 261 participants from four congressional districts and six counties completed the survey, supported by recruitment efforts from three regional partner organizations. Post-recruitment interviews with community partners revealed key implementation challenges, including digital literacy barriers and trust in external institutions, as well as recommendations for future multimodal survey dissemination. Findings demonstrate the feasibility and value of using CCM to systematically capture culturally grounded health priorities, offering a promising complement to participatory methods and a pathway for advancing equity-centered, community-defined public health interventions within RCMI initiatives. Because the purpose of this manuscript is to document the feasibility and process of integrating CCM within a community-engaged framework, analytic CCM results are intentionally not included and will be presented in a separate manuscript.