Meaningful patient and public involvement: opinion article published in BMC Medicine
A new BMC Opinion article explores patient and public involvement (PPI) at the Centre as an exemplar for meaningful and lasting involvement
A new BMC Opinion article explores patient and public involvement (PPI) at the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research as an exemplar for meaningful and lasting involvement.
Several members of the Centre contributed to the article, written by PPI Research Fellow Tracy Jackson, including volunteer PPI patient leads Elisabeth Ehrlich and Olivia Fulton.
Steps to meaningful involvement
"Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research envisages a relationship built throughout the lifespan of a research project between academics, clinicians and PPI colleagues in order to inform, plan, execute and, in due course, disseminate and translate research."
Despite funders increasingly requiring PPI plans to be included in grant applications, the article highlights that there remains a gap between what is expected and what is delivered.
The article describes the steps taken at the Centre to create a supportive, organised environment for PPI with the overarching value of “keeping patients at the heart of everything we do”.
An international perspective
Having learnt from the development of a successful model within the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research, Tracy is now working together with researchers in the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE) to adapt this involvement model to different cultural contexts.
Read the article
Cite as
Jackson T, Pinnock H, Liew SM, Horne E, Ehrlich E, Fulton O, Worth A, Sheikh A and De Simoni A (2020) Patient and public involvement in research: from tokenistic box ticking to valued team members. BMC Medicine 18:79. DOI: 10.1186/s12916-020-01544-7