Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) strategy

Motif

What is PPIE?

  • Involvement is when research is carried out with or by members of the public rather than for them. Our public contributors might advise on research questions, review study materials and sit on committees involved in the research process.
  • Engagement is where researchers share information about research with the public to get their input.

Key principles of our strategy

  • Involving public contributors in decision-making
    We want to ensure our public contributors can influence decisions about how we conduct research.
  • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    We want to ensure we’re addressing health inequalities and engaging with under-served communities so everyone can benefit from the diverse experiences and knowledge of our public contributors.
  • Continuous improvement
    Evaluating the quality of our PPIE practice, measuring its impact and getting feedback about it will help us improve it.

Key goals

  • Embed PPIE within our management and governance
  • Have a more diverse range of people involved with the design and conduct of our research
  • Continue to build partnerships with people from underserved communities
  • Collaborate with organisations working directly with underserved communities
  • Develop innovative approaches and advance PPIE practice into new areas
  • Develop new training resources to support PPIE
  • Use accessible evaluation tools to improve PPIE practice and assess its impact

Meeting our goals

Public advisory group

We have set up a BRC public advisory group which will be responsible for:

  • Providing feedback on how the BRC is governed
  • Advising and monitoring how this PPIE strategy is delivered
  • Providing support to the BRC PPIE team

Health research ambassadors

We will work with other regional organisations and the newly formed Research Engagement Network Development (REND) to build on and extend our health research ambassadors project.

The ambassadors project involves recruiting, training and mentoring promising key members and leaders from underserved communities to provide a link between research and the communities we would like to reach.

Community engagement

We will recruit a community PPIE lead to build long-term relationships with key groups currently under-represented in our work. The PPIE lead will improve involvement in our research projects by co-ordinating what we do with initiatives that are already happening.

Innovation in PPIE

We will support public involvement in data and population science by helping our public contributors develop their understanding of research methodologies, governance and ethics. To do this, we will build on previous work with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) COVALESCENCE long COVID study and the OpenSAFELY electronic health record platform (www.opensafely.org).

Support and training for PPIE

We will provide training for public contributors tailored to our research areas and projects. The training will be provided three times a year and contributors will be able to request the specific training they need.

PPIE facilitators embedded in the BRC research themes will support researchers with PPIE for specific projects, including advising on approaches and providing guidance on recording impact.

Evaluating impact

We have developed both online and paper-based impact logs to evaluate PPIE. They are quick and simple to use and BRC researchers will be required to complete them to monitor PPIE.

We will also promote the Cube evaluation framework. The Cube framework is an accessible way of evaluating and improving the quality of public involvement by encouraging dialogue between researchers and public contributors.

Working in partnership to deliver our goals

We work with our regional PPIE network People in Health West of England (PHWE). PHWE has good links with local health and care research organisations such as the Integrated Care System (ICS), Academic Health Science Centre (Bristol Health Partners AHSC) and our local Academic Health Science Network (AHSN). PHWE promotes innovation and best practice in PPIE and speeds up adoption of best practice across the region.

Addressing health inequalities

To ensure that our research benefits the people who need it most, we have partnered with the Bradford Institute for Health Research (IHR). Working with Bradford IHR will enable us to work with a wider range of people from different communities. Bradford has adopted the citizen science model, an innovative way of establishing working research partnerships with communities.

How will we monitor and make sure we achieve this strategy?

Our public advisory group makes decisions about the PPIE strategy. These decisions are then signed off by the BRC Executive Group, a group of senior staff in the BRC.

Once the strategy is decided, the work is managed by the BRC PPIE group. The group will review examples of impact and talk about how to make PPIE better in the BRC.

We will talk to the public advisory group every three months to explain how we are progressing. We will discuss progress with the wider BRC, including the Executive Group, every six months.

You can access our full patient and public involvement and engagement strategy document here.