How Researchers Can Partner With Mobile Clinics
Successful mobile clinic research begins with a question that matters to the program and the community. Researchers should involve partners before the study design is fixed, budget for their expertise, learn how the program operates, share important decisions, and return findings in forms people can use.
The research question does not have to be about mobile healthcare. A mobile program may be a relevant partner for research on chronic disease management, oral health, preventive care, behavioral health, cultural responsiveness, access, patient experience, implementation, or health equity. In these studies, mobile care may be the setting or delivery partner rather than the subject of the research.
Mobile clinics provide care through community partnerships and trusted relationships. Treating them simply as recruitment locations overlooks what makes the work possible.
If you are still deciding whether a mobile program fits your question, begin with [Community-Based Health Research Partnerships: Why Consider Mobile Clinics](/research-resources/community-based-health-research-partnerships/).
Understand the setting before proposing the study
Mobile programs operate across changing locations, schedules, staffing models, service lines, technologies, and community partnerships. Weather, vehicle maintenance, site access, local events, clinical demand, and funding can affect operations.
Before approaching a program, learn about:
- Who the program serves and why
- What services it provides
- How sites and schedules are selected
- How patients enter and move through care
- What data are collected as part of normal operations
- Which community organizations make the work possible
- What questions staff and community members want answered
Bring a one-page concept, not a completed protocol
Your initial concept should explain:
- The problem you want to study
- Why a mobile setting is relevant
- What the program and community could gain
- What you want staff, patients, or partners to do
- What data you may need
- The likely timeline and operational burden
- What funding is available
- Which parts of the question and design remain open to change
This gives partners enough information to consider the idea while leaving important decisions open.
Build the partnership in eight steps
1. Ask what matters locally
Start with the priorities of the program and community. A researchable question should also be useful to the people whose time, expertise, and trust will support the work.
2. Engage partners early and throughout the project
Include program and community partners in developing the question and design, planning recruitment, choosing measures, interpreting findings, and sharing results. One listening session at the beginning is consultation. A partnership gives people a meaningful role in decisions throughout the project.
3. Design around care delivery
Map patient and staff workflows. Identify where research activities could create delays, confusion, loss of privacy, or pressure to participate. Pilot recruitment and data collection on a small scale.
4. Define roles and decision rights
Agree on who can change the protocol, approve community-facing materials, access data, interpret findings, speak publicly, and decide when results are ready to share.
5. Pay for the work
Participating in research takes time away from care delivery and other program responsibilities. Estimate the work you will ask the mobile program to perform and include the full cost in the proposal budget. Do this before the application is submitted, while the scope and budget can still change.
Depending on the study, the partner budget may need to cover:
- A defined percentage of salary and fringe benefits for the program leader, clinical manager, or other staff who will contribute effort
- A new or existing research coordinator, project manager, data manager, or community liaison
- Clinical, outreach, and administrative staff time for recruitment, consent, data collection, follow-up, scheduling, and project meetings
- Added data collection beyond what the program gathers for routine care, including training, forms, devices, software, supplies, and quality checks
- Data extraction, cleaning, documentation, security, and transfer
- Translation, interpretation, accessibility, and community-engagement costs
- Local travel for data collection and mileage or other transportation costs
- Registration, travel, lodging, and staff time for program partners to present findings at conferences or other research meetings
- The program’s allowable administrative or indirect costs
When the mobile program is a separate organization performing a substantive part of the research, include it in the application through an appropriate subaward, consortium agreement, contract, or other mechanism allowed by the funder. The correct mechanism depends on the program’s role and the sponsor’s rules. Develop the scope of work and budget with the mobile program rather than assigning an amount without its review.
If the available funding cannot cover the work, reduce or redesign the research activities with the partner. Do not shift the unfunded work to program staff. Participant compensation and payment for individual community advisors are separate from the organizational resources needed for the mobile program to carry out the study.
6. Plan ethics, IRB review, and privacy together
Identify the reviewing institution, potential reliance agreements, consent approach, HIPAA or other privacy requirements, data-sharing terms, and safeguards before recruitment or data access begins.
7. Review progress together
At regular intervals, ask what is working, what is burdensome, what has changed in the program, and whether the study should be adjusted.
8. Return results and share credit
Provide timely findings in plain language. Discuss unfavorable, uncertain, and incomplete results honestly. Include partners in interpreting the findings, presenting and publishing the work, and deciding whether the data may be used in the future. When a program partner will present at a conference or other meeting, include preparation time, registration, travel, and lodging in the research budget.
Questions mobile programs are likely to ask
Be ready to answer:
- Why do you need a mobile clinic for this study?
- How will this help our patients, community, or program?
- How much staff and patient time will it require?
- Who pays the direct and indirect costs?
- Which staff positions and percentages of effort are included in the budget?
- Will added data collection require a coordinator or other dedicated position?
- How will travel and conference participation be covered?
- Who owns or controls the data?
- What happens if the study disrupts care?
- How will people be invited without feeling pressured?
- Who decides how the program and community are described?
- When and how will we receive the results?
- What happens when the grant or study ends?
Partnership terms to document
Use a memorandum of understanding, collaboration agreement, data-sharing agreement, or other appropriate document to address:
- Purpose, scope, and period of the partnership
- Roles and responsible contacts
- Budget and payment schedule
- Personnel effort, fringe benefits, travel, supplies, and indirect costs
- Subaward, contract, or other funding arrangement, when organizations are separate
- Research and operational decisions
- IRB and regulatory responsibilities
- Data access, security, use, retention, and destruction
- Recruitment and consent responsibilities
- Communication and issue escalation
- Authorship, acknowledgment, and presentations
- Review of public descriptions and findings
- Return of results to participants and communities
- Changes, termination, and work remaining after termination
Avoid preventable partnership failures
Partnerships are at risk when the protocol is finished before local input is invited, program labor is treated as free, recruitment plans ignore care delivery, data access is broader than necessary, or a publication is the only planned product.
A useful partnership leaves the program and community with greater knowledge, stronger capacity, or better tools than they had at the beginning.
Frequently asked questions
When should I contact a mobile clinic?
Contact potential partners while the research question, design, budget, and timeline can still change. Do this before submitting a grant that depends on the program’s participation.
Should a mobile clinic leader be a co-investigator?
The role should reflect the person’s intellectual, operational, and decision-making contributions. Discuss roles, payment, authorship, and institutional requirements early.
Can staff recruit their own patients?
Sometimes, but the approach requires careful review because patients may believe that participation will affect their care. The study team and IRB should address who makes the invitation, when it occurs, what treating staff can see, and how the team will protect voluntary choice.
What if the program’s priorities differ from mine?
Treat that difference as important information. Revise the question, identify a shared question, or decide that the partnership is not a good fit.
Partnership resources
- Foundational Expectations for Partnerships in Research, PCORI
- Dedicated Funds for Engagement and Partner Compensation, PCORI
- Subawards, NIH Grants and Funding
- The Belmont Report, HHS Office for Human Research Protections
Related resources
Have a research question or a program worth studying?
GMHRC helps researchers and mobile healthcare programs find each other and plan work that is useful to both.