Building cross-institutional collaborative infrastructure and processes: Early lessons from the chicago cancer health equity collaborative

Background: Addressing cancer health disparities requires a multitiered, comprehensive approach. The Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (ChicagoCHEC) was established as a tri-institutional partnership to advance cancer health equity through scientific discovery, education, and community engagement. Objectives: Large-scale partnerships rarely document the challenges encountered when establishing processes and operations in the formative years of engagement. We outline selected lessons learned from the first three years of ChicagoCHEC in hopes that future collaborations may be better poised to hit the ground running and create the needed infrastructure for a strong, effective, and sustainable partnership. Lessons Learned: Unifying a diverse group of stakeholders under a shared mission is imperative. A shared governance structure, in which all individuals understand the aims of partnership and can facilitate progress, is crucial for success. Ongoing monitoring of collaborative processes should occur and attention should be given to the optimization of communications. Conclusions: Large-scale collaborative research and education projects across institutions can be challenging, particularly when establishing a working infrastructure and aligning priorities. However, the benefit of establishing key processes in the early years of the collaborative process can lead to high-quality research output, impact, and a sustainable partnership.