摘要：Public engagement is an essential component of public health research, practice, knowledge exchange processes, and decision making. (1, 2) Public engagement is not a novel concept, but is often "easier said than done" (3) and can vary in practice. In health research, the extent to which members of the public, as a public, are engaged varies, and the effectiveness and inclusiveness of the engagement depends on researchers' intent and purpose. (4) Particularly for research that involves experiences in the everyday, such as people's food shopping in retail settings, public engagement is a way to incorporate processes of democratic deliberation and collective decision making. (5) In ideal situations, public engagement generates mutual benefit between researchers and non-researchers, but this might not always be the case. One approach to engagement that attempts to clearly define a productive relationship between researchers and the public is citizen science. We are especially interested in how focusing on the "citizen" in citizen science approaches can help to democratize science, enhance community capacity, and empower citizens to advocate for and act upon public health issues concerning their local environments, (6) in contrast to public engagement approaches more oriented toward strengthening the practice of research, or related approaches such as patient engagement that focus on public involvement in health services decision making.
Citizen science is an umbrella term for a range of strategies that directly involve members of the public as active contributors to scientific processes. (4, 7) A 2013 European green paper on citizen science defined it as "the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources". (8)
