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Engagement

Engagement is where information and knowledge about research is provided and disseminated.

A number of our PPI Advisors are engaging with community groups to raise awareness of CLAHRC WM and to disseminate knowledge about its research and implementation research activities. We hope that our PPI Advisors will continue to have an active role in the dissemination of key messages to their respective groups to form ‘communities of practice’.

See the PPI Advisor profile page detailing this activity.

Programme for engagement in applied science

Providing opportunities to engage in the method of applied science is one of our crucial objectives. The overarching aim is to broaden communities where the public interacts with services. The Director actively encourages our PPI Advisors to pursue roles within services including Hospital and Patient Carer Councils, Health Watch and Patient Participation groups, as examples.

We recognise the importance of engagement, as an awareness raising activity and as a precursor to more active forms of involvement, where patients can be partners in research, rather than only recipients of information.

CLAHRC West Midlands continues to support national activities aimed at raising awareness, including

Reaching under-represented groups

Under the pilot CLAHRC for Birmingham and Black Country, Dr Sabi Redwood led research into the best methods to reach ‘seldom heard’ voices and less represented groups within our local communities – read the CLAHRC BITE.

We plan to continue this work under the Implementation and Organisational Studies Theme and through collaboration with other interested research groups in the region. We note this objective aligns to recommendation ten of the recently published ‘Going the Extra Mile’ document published by the NIHR following a strategic review of PPI in research. This recommendation calls for a diverse and inclusive public involvement community to inform health service research.

News Blog

On the recommendation of the PPI Supervisory Committee, we have expanded the News Blog to contain a PPIEP section. This includes information about the PPI activity taking place within the individual Themes and describes the progress of the PPI research plan being undertaken as part of the Implementation & Organisational Studies Theme.

There is also a section to promote additional opportunities for patients and the public to become involved in other related research activities in an advisory capacity. The News Blog reaches a number of community groups and is circulated widely via social media and other communication channels.

Communication and Dissemination

We are currently updating our website to include lay summaries using plain English for each of the Theme-based projects in line with the NIHR ‘make it clear’ campaign

We have recently published our first ‘SUPER BITE’ and the PPI Advisors provided comments on an early draft. This ‘larger’ CLAHRC BITE summarises the events that led to the change in mental health services in Birmingham, bringing together the published papers/evidence with commissioning information.

We have also participated in a number of public facing events to raise aware of the CLAHRC and to disseminate information about our research and implementation research activities, including:

  • Birmingham University Research Think-tank Pop-up
  • AHSN West Midlands Stakeholder Event

[We will add thumbnail images from the above event in due course]

Additionally, Dr Staniszewska, has been involved with the launch of a new international journal to disseminate PPI research ‘Research Involvement and Engagement;’ and is the co-editor in chief of the open access journal.