Dialogue on difference: Invisible bridges and barriers of community-engaged research

Across the social sciences, researchers increasingly are adopting community-engaged research methods to address social problems. Communication researchers still face disciplinary, bureaucratic, and paradigmatic challenges in developing research programs in community-engaged methods. Concomitantly, the larger body of literature on community-engaged research is poorer because of the lack of communication perspectives informing it. Through this collaborative "forum" essay, a diverse group of community-engaged health communication scholars offer experiential insights to address this double dilemma. We offer a reflexive account of the "risks and rewards" of community-engaged research for communication researchers. We then demonstrate how communication perspectives enliven the process of engaging communities in research. Both facets are discussed at the interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels, with the objective of broadening the knowledge on community-engaged research practices.