Community engagement in minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia: A scoping review

Project Title: Community engagement in minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia: A scoping review Aim: To investigate community engagement approaches for minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia. Background/Rationale: People belonging to minoritised ethnic communities in most high-income countries (HICs) have different dementia aetiologies, prognosis, and treatment (Babulal et al., 2019). Despite being at higher risk of developing dementia, minoritised ethnic communities remain largely underrepresented in dementia research, with merely 11.4% of all participants being from non-White backgrounds and most studies not reporting data on ethnicity (Vyas et al., 2018). Utilising community engagement has been proven to be beneficial for increasing representation in research. This approach facilitates recruitment (Witham et al., 2020), encourages participation (Khan et al., 2024), and ensures a wider reach of the outcomes (Naeem et al., 2023). Although the benefits of community engagement in research are well-established, the approach is not utilised widely in dementia research, leading to underrepresentation of minoritised ethnic communities. Therefore, mapping the approaches used for meaningful community engagement in dementia research for minoritised ethnic communities will increase awareness of these and provide a starting point for researchers to effectively utilise these. Additionally, the rationale for this review is also to utilise the findings to inform the research being conducted as a part of the Dementia Community Research Network (DCRN). Objectives: 1. Identifying gaps in understanding of community engagement in minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia. 2. Identifying high-quality studies examining community engagement in minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia. Method (eligibility criteria, information sources, search strategy): The PPC (population, concept, and context) criteria will be applied to identify the areas of interest, as it has been found to be more suitable for scoping reviews (Brijnath et al., 2021). Therefore, the population is minoritised ethnic communities affected by dementia, the concept is models of community engagement, and the context is dementia research. Studies that focus on how community engagement is conducted to increase representation of minoritised ethnic communities in dementia research will be included. The following databases will be searched for any relevant studies: CINAHL, EMBASE, SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION, PSYCINFO, MEDLINE, WEB OF SCIENCE. Approach to Analysis: A draft charting table will be developed and piloted at the protocol stage to record the key information of the source, such as author, reference, and results. The findings of the review will be presented using a narrative approach. They will be described using a visual presentation of the findings in tabular format, which will showcase how they relate to the objectives of the review.