Welcome to INSPIRE's Community Engagement Assessment & Practice Library

This self-assessment was developed by the INSPIRE team, a national partnership of organizations and people with lived experience (PWLE) working together to advance the practice of authentic community engagement. 

The self-assessment asks you to answer questions about your organization’s work related to:

• Creating strategies and goals for engaging PWLE
• Building authentic and impactful relationships with PWLE
• Building organizational infrastructure for engaging PWLE
• Measuring and evaluating your work with PWLE

Your results will provide customized links to articles in our Practice Library, intended to support professionals leading efforts to partner with PWLE by providing actionable guidance and real-life examples.

For more information: 

• Read INSPIRE’s strategic roadmap 
• Read the background & methodology of this project

This assessment is designed for anyone whose job involves leading or supporting community engagement. Community engagement refers to the different ways in which organizations can reach out to, engage, and partner with people with lived experience (PWLE), with the goal of working together to improve healthcare and achieve positive health outcomes.

Thinking about your organization, rate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the statements in the assessment. When answering, we encourage you to consider the statement as a whole and respond candidly. Note that it’s unlikely that any organization is doing all of these things perfectly – we all have room to grow!

Your responses will be used to provide recommendations about specific ways your organization can strengthen partnerships with PWLE. 

We strongly recommend that you start with the self-assessment so we can help point you in the right direction, but you can choose to skip the self-assessment and explore our full Practice Library on your own.

You can take this self-assessment on your own, and we also encourage you to share this tool with your colleagues and with PWLE you work with (for instance, PWLE who are part of your organization’s patient/community advisory committee). Discussing the questions and results together can help you identify areas where people may have different perspectives and start conversations about how you can strengthen your work together.