Building engagement in healthy aging outcomes research with older women with lived experience of incarceration.

Community-dwelling older women (age >50) with lived experience of incarceration (LEI) are an increasing yet mostly unacknowledged group with long-term health challenges. Research addressing aging-related health in older women with LEI is rare, and almost none engages collaboratively and equitably with older women to understand their aging-related health needs, preferences, and priorities. To foster awareness and readiness for engagement in outcomes research, we co-planned, implemented, and evaluated a sequence of interlinked activities and outputs with older women, clinicians and researchers, and community advocates. The Older Women Leading Healthy Aging Research Together (OWLHART) network met monthly from November 2024 to June 2025. Four to six women, two clinician-researchers, two community advocates, and a project team shared aging-related health beliefs, concerns, and outcome priorities; learned the basics of research and benefits of patient-centered outcomes research; created tools to teach about older women's health after incarceration and the role of research; and developed outreach to disseminate the work. OWLHART models an equity-focused capacity-building approach for research engagement outside the clinical setting and with a patient group that has been overlooked as patients and as research partners.