Being a parent requires learning a whole new set of skills. Sometimes, you can learn those skills by looking up the instructions, like learning how to build a crib or how to secure a car seat—while some skills can only be learned through experience, like figuring out how to talk on the phone while pushing a stroller and opening a juice box all at the same time. But maybe the hardest skills to learn are the personal skills, as a new parent faces the joys and frustrations of helping their child grow and develop.

The PriCARE study (short for "Child Adult Relationship Enhancement in Pediatric Primary Care"), led by Samantha Schilling, a pediatrician at the UNC School of Medicine and a faculty fellow at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, is trying to help parents navigate some of these challenges. The research team has developed a series of six evidence-based workshops where parents learn things like why children behave the way they do, how to encourage cooperation, and the impact of stress on children and caregivers—as well as practical skills that can foster a positive parent-child relationship.

Previous research has shown evidence that PriCARE can both improve child behavior and reduce parental stress. But the study's organizers have also been facing a challenge: many of the parents that signed up for the classes were dropping out partway through the program.

To figure out why, the PriCARE team decided to conduct a community feedback session, facilitated by the Patient and Community Engagement in Research (PaCER) program at the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute.

Read the full story, written by Ethan Freedman, to see how the NC TraCS community feedback helped the PriCARE study team.