Author: Taru

What is public involvement in health research?

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Public involvement means the various different ways the general public can shape research activities and make sure research is carried out with them, in addition to taking part in research as research participants.

We see open discussions as a big part of public involvement. We hope to do research that is relevant to everyone. This is why we want to understand your views better and having open conversations with you is a natural way to do this.

Our community involvement project is only one approach to public involvement: our focus is on sharing our research and understanding how we can make our way of working more inclusive going forward. We have aimed to keep our approach as open and flexible as possible. This is why we have put together a short questionnaire to ask what people aged 55+ think might be enjoyable activities.

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We are looking for people aged 55+ living in Tewkesbury (with remote activities open also to people in Newcastle and Birmingham), Cardiff, Glasgow and Cardiff to join us in planning and organising community involvement activities. You can complete our short questionnaire here. If you would like to know more, please get in touch.

You may have also heard some people talk about public engagement which is about sharing research with the general public in a mutually benefiting way. This shows how broad the ideas to be inclusive and engaging are! There is also a term in health research particularly that you may have come across before: patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE). In general this means that some aspects of research are done together with members of the public. This is based on the fact that people/patients with experience of health care are experts in a way that researchers may not be.

This video made by researchers at NIHR ARC South West Peninsula (PenARC) explains nicely what Patient and Public Involvement means:

 

There are also lots of useful resources available online for people who are considering becoming involved:

The jargon buster explains some common terms often used in research.

NIHR has also put together a Starting Out booklet which shares some general guidance with people who are new to public involvement. It’s also available as an audio version here.

If you would like to get involved in health research beyond our project, the Health Protection Research Unit website includes further information about public involvement opportunities.

Invitation to take part in a workshop in Cardiff

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If you are aged 55+ and living in Cardiff, we invite you to join a planning workshop with us.

Our second workshop is due to take place during early April and will be open to people living around Cardiff. The workshop is expected to be held remotely using Zoom video calling.

If you’d like to be one of the people taking part in this planning workshop please get in touch with us now. You can also register your interest by completing our questionnaire here.

If you have any comments or feedback, you can always leave a comment below.

Invitation to take part in a workshop in England

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If you are aged 55+ and living in Tewkesbury, Birmingham or Newcastle we invite you to join a planning workshop with us.

Our first workshop will take place 23rd of  February and will be open to people living around Tewkesbury, Newcastle and Birmingham. The workshop will take place remotely using Zoom video calling.

We will offer compensation for your time when you join the planning activities in the form of high street vouchers for the value of £20 per hour (£10 for 0.5h).

If you’d like to be one of the people taking part in this planning workshop please get in touch with us now.

If you have any comments or feedback, you can always leave a comment below.

Workshops to plan community events

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Are you interested in taking part in one of our workshops but are not sure what these entail? You’ve come to the right place!

We are holding workshops where we (the research team) plan community events together with people aged 55 and over. We have four locations where we aim to hold events and we will hold one planning workshop per area. We expect the workshops to take place in February – May 2022.

Our four locations are: Tewkesbury (remote participation open to people in Birmingham and Newcastle), Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast.

The workshop will be an informal meeting (online or in person) lasting up to 2 hours where we discuss ideas and draft a plan for a community event together. We will share the results of a short questionnaire we have been using to ask people their preference about community involvement activities with you via email (or post) before the meeting.  This is to show what activities people have said they prefer, to give some indication of what we could do in the community events. In the meeting we will discuss:

  • Where you would prefer to hold the community event: in person (if safe to do so) or online
  • What activities the event should include and how to organise these
  • How to invite people to join us

The workshops will be a place for open conversation. You are welcome to pitch ideas or critique our suggestions, it’s completely up to you. We think everyone is an expert based on their own experiences so feel free to share your views with us.

There will be a maximum of 10 people attending the meeting in addition to the research team. We will offer compensation for your time preparing (max 0.5h) and attending (max 2h) the meeting. Compensation will be in the form of high street vouchers for the value of £20 per hour (£10 for 0.5h).

Whether the meeting will take place online or in person is up to you – and also public health advice at the time. We will also try to accommodate mixed meetings if relevant so that some people attend in person and others join virtually through Zoom video calling. You can view a brief Zoom guidance here.

If you have any further questions you can post a comment below or get in touch with us directly. Our contact details can be found here.

Getting involved

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We are holding a series of community involvement activities during spring 2022 relating to our health research project. We have already held a number of online focus groups with people across the UK as part of our research project ‘What does vaccination mean to people aged 55+?’.

Now we hope to include people from different backgrounds in our community involvement activities . This is so we can hear as many views and opinions as possible. If you are aged 55+ and living in the UK  we would love to hear from you! Some of our activities are location specific but our questionnaire is open across the UK.

Our project locations are: Tewkesbury (with remote participation open to people in Birmingham and Newcastle), Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast.

There are several ways you can get involved:

Fill in our online questionnaire

  • Our short online questionnaire is now open. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to complete and you can tell us what kind of activities you think people might enjoy.
  • You’re welcome to complete the questionnaire only – there is no obligation to take part in the other activities.

Sign up for a planning workshop

  • Planning workshops are informal meetings where you can help us shape what kind of community events we organise in our four locations (Tewkesbury – remotely open to people in Birmingham and Newcastle; Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast). These will take place either online or in-person during February – April 2022.
  • You’re welcome to attend the planning workshop only if you wish.

Sign up to co-deliver or attend a community event

  • Our four community events will be open for the public to attend. There is also an opportunity to help us carry out your local event.

Write about our activities

  • Once our activities are completed, we will be looking for co-authors who could help us write about the community involvement project.

We will offer compensation for your time when you join the planning, co-delivery, or writing activities in the form of high street vouchers for the value of £20 per hour (£10 for 0.5h).

We’ve tried to keep this project as flexible as possible so that we can take your views onboard. Our aim is to do this project together with members of the public and learn from you in the process.

If you’re interested in our project but not sure how you would like to get involved, please get in touch.

We’re happy to discuss our plans with you and are keen to hear any suggestions you may have. You can also leave a comment below.

Ongoing research

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Our research project ‘What does vaccination mean to people aged 55+?’ has been live since July 2021. We have already held a number of online focus groups and will be continuing with this work until Summer 2022.

Our research looks at the reasons why older adults in the UK choose to be vaccinated or not. This relates particularly to vaccination offered by the NHS to people aged 65 and over, which includes the influenza (flu) vaccine, pneumococcal vaccine, shingles vaccine and now also the COVID-19 vaccine.

We hope to understand the many reasons behind older adults’ vaccination decisions to improve the current vaccination programme for those who want to access it.  It’s also really important to us that we hear from those who choose not to get vaccinated, either some or all of the time.  More broadly, we hope to contribute to keeping older people fit and well.

We are conducting online focus groups to investigate why older adults choose to be vaccinated or not. The discussion groups take place online using Zoom video calling.

If you are aged 55 and over, and live in one of the study areas in the UK we would like to hear from you. The research will include the following local authority areas:

  • Bedford, East of England
  • Birmingham, West Midlands
  • Bradford, Yorkshire & Humber
  • Manchester, North West
  • Newham, London
  • Wellingborough, East Midlands
  • Wycombe, South East
  • Glasgow, Scotland
  • Perth & Kinross, Scotland
  • Pembrokeshire, Wales
  • two locations in Northern Ireland to be confirmed

We have already held focus groups in:

  • Tewkesbury, South West
  • Cardiff, Wales
  • Newcastle upon Tyne, North East

See the project website for further information: https://www.hprubse.nihr.ac.uk/research/research-topics/immunisation-and-vaccination/what-does-vaccination-mean-to-people-aged-55/

If you would like to take part in the research, you can express your interest by filling in this questionnaire

Research timeline

  • August–December 2021 & January – April 2022: Participants sought for online focus groups
  • October–December 2021 & January – April 2022: Focus groups take place online
  • January–July 2022: Sharing research findings with the public, the research community and policy-makers.

This research project is funded by the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at University of Bristol as part of a portfolio of five research projects led by Hannah Christensen.

Meet the team!

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This community engagement project is led by two University of Bristol researchers who are working together on the ‘What does vaccination mean to people aged 55+?’ project. Both are members of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at the University of Bristol.

Taru Silvonen is a research assistant with a PhD in sociology. Her previous work has focused on neighbourhood and community development alongside social support networks.

“I joined University of Bristol in March 2021 to work on this project, but I’ve actually lived in Bristol for over 5 years. Bristol is my second home in the UK, after living in Manchester for a good few years. My roots are in Finland but I’ve also done research in Mexico so I like to keep things fairly international!

The community engagement work combines my past experience of working with communities with health research which is still a new world to me. I’m really interested in participation and what makes people come together to do things so it’s great to be able to focus on this alongside a major research project. I’m looking forward to chatting to people – whether online or in person – and hearing how we could make research more approachable and interesting to everyone.”

Hannah Christensen is Senior lecturer in Infectious Disease Mathematical Modelling. She is an epidemiologist with a wealth of expertise on infectious diseases, vaccines, mathematical modelling and health economics.

“I spent my student days in Nottingham, but have mostly lived in the Midlands and Southwest of England.  Before joining the University of Bristol in 2004 I worked in public health roles supporting outbreak investigations and surveillance work for different infectious diseases in the UK.  Most of my academic work so far has been focused on vaccinations for children and adolescents, helping to shape policy both in the UK and internationally.

I’m now very excited to be working with adults and exploring their views on this topic.  Research is only useful if it’s truly relevant to the people involved and the best way of doing that is working together with the people and communities affected.   I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to get funding to support our community engagement work so we can talk to people about what we’re doing, particularly those who wouldn’t normally get involved with research, to make what we do more accessible.”