Background: There is opportunity for Universities to actively engage with Aboriginal communities to participate, conduct, and ideally lead, responsible research that attends to community priorities and issues. The Health from the Grassroots (Grassroots) project seeks to address an ongoing mismatch between university-defined priorities and community-defined priorities in rural [***]. Grassroots, led by Aboriginal staff of the [***], is a community engagement project aimed at engaging Aboriginal communities in conversations to inform research priorities. This paper describes the project vision, implementation, and lessons learned in the first years.

Approach: The Grassroots project was a true representation of collaborative research led by and for Aboriginal people. We designed and conducted a local survey and yarning sessions with community members and used this information to design a “rich picture” to report findings and engage in further conversation with communities about evolving health and research priorities.

We identified strengths and challenges faced by communities and health services in the region. The Aboriginal research team centred community in decision-making for project design and direction.

Lessons Learned: Challenges encountered included limited resources and devoted time for the research team as this project occurred alongside staffs’ substantive positions. Community members were highly engaged in the consultation process and the rich picture continues to be used to further conversations about research action.

Conclusions: Deep-rooted relationships and identities as members of the Community in which we live, and work enabled meaningful consultation to inform research action. Research priorities identified through the Grassroots project have been integrated into the ongoing work of the [***].