A journal article we wrote has now been published in the Health Expectations journal.
You can read the article online through this link.
Category: Uncategorized
Join us in Tewkesbury!
We’re holding our fourth and final community event of the series in Tewkesbury! Join us on Thursday 26th January for an afternoon with free activities.
You can join us for some or all of the activities:
- We will start at 11:00am with hot beverages which you can enjoy whilst socialising with others and meet the researchers.
- There will be a talk to share some findings of our research ‘What does vaccination mean to people aged 55+?‘ and a chance to ask us questions at 11:15am.
- This will be followed at 11:45am with a light exercise demonstration.
- There’s a further chance to socialise over sandwiches and top up your tea or coffee at 12:15pm
- We will continue with an activity where you can write (or draw!) us a postcard to share any thoughts if you like. We will then read out some postcards from our previous events and talk about opportunities to get involved in what we do or just provide feedback at 12:45pm.
- We’ll finish the activities by 1:30pm.
If you would like to join us, please sign up through our online form, send us an email or give us a call on 0117 455 7657. The event will take place at The Roses Theatre, Sun street, GL20 5NX. We hope to see you there!
What is public involvement in health research?
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.
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.
Workshops to plan community events
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.