Sarah J Lux

Employing narrative reflections based on personal research and community engagement experiences, community-based participatory research theory, and the principle of accompaniment, this narrative chapter guides readers through some of the common pitfalls researchers face while creating and executing community-based and not just community-placed, community-engaged, and participatory public health research. The authors argue that using culturally responsive, deep listening to engage with community narratives is the fertile soil from which accompaniment relationships grow. If tended with care and love, the fruits of these labors are the march toward epistemic justice and health equity. This chapter also offers brief reflective activities to assist researchers so that they may begin to sow the seeds of less harmful and more inclusive, asset-based, and enduring community relationships.

The dismantling of structural oppression can be aided by culturally and ethically responsible co-creation between marginalized communities and arts-based public health researchers. In this chapter, the authors will provide examples of nurtured relationships with Black women on the breast cancer continuum, focusing on their “real talk” (Morgan et al. ABNF Journal 25, 2014) being centred. Specifically, through Black women-led discussions about their cancer experiences, use of cultural health capital (Dubbin et al. Social Science & Medicine 93:113–120, 2013) to address provider misogynoir (Sacks 2016) and gendered and racialized roles in community wellness, poetry, and narratives were cultivated and shared as part of arts in health education (Sonke et al. 2019) initiatives. Guided by epistemic justice, transformational grounded theory, and culturally relevant creative expressions, this chapter explores how arts-based health researchers can amplify genuine Black experiences and infuse Black epistemology into BIPOC community problem-solving opportunities, while minimizing risk of exploitation through co-creation, co-evaluation, and co-dissemination.