 The paper examined the environmental scan of clinical and translational science award, CTSA, HUB's efforts to engage community partners to reduce the spread of the virus, address barriers to COVID-19 testing, identify treatments to improve health outcomes, and advance community participation in research. The CTSA researchers, staff, and community partners collaborated to develop evidence-based, inclusive, accessible, and culturally appropriate strategies and resources helping community members stay healthy, informed, and connected during the pandemic. Various mechanisms were used to advance co-learning and co-sharing of knowledge, resources, tools, and experiences between academic professionals, patients, community partners, and other stakeholders. These forward-thinking and adaptive decision-making structures prioritized sustained relationships, mutual trust and commitment, ongoing communication, proactive identification of community concerns and needs, shared goals and decision-making, as well as ample appreciation of community members and their contributions to translational research. There is a strong need for further community-engaged research and workforce training on how to build our collective and individual adaptive capacity to sustain and improve processes and outcomes of engagement. This article was authored by Boris B. Volkov, Veronica Hoyle, and Joe Hunt.