Here at the WCPS, we have formed relationships with community groups, patient groups, lived experience groups, carers, healthcare professionals to make sure exciting developments in research directly benefit these groups and it makes lasting changes to people’s lives.
Our members work with such groups to make sure they ask the right questions; in other words, they are ‘doing research that is needed by the people who will benefit from the research’. This engagement also helps to ensure that our research is appropriate and acceptable to the people who take part in it.
To maximise the impact we can achieve from our research, we need to understand who to share our research with; working with these groups helps us reach out to the right people. By working with these groups throughout the research process it has helped teams make a difference to people’s lives. Some notable examples include working with people with lived experience of death by suicide. This work led by Dr. Jay Mackenzie to evaluate technological advances in the prevention of suicide resulted in a 1.1 million grant awarded by NIHR to lead an evaluation of surveillance technology in reducing suicides and suicide attempts in public locations (read more about the involvement of lived experience groups here).
Another team works with diverse groups to better support and care for ethnic minority patients seeking healthcare support for Long Covid. The project was awarded funding from NIHR, and qualitative findings from interviews with people living with Long Covid were used to develop video-artwork ‘Still looking for answers’ to share experiences of Long Covid, the ‘Supporting Long Covid Care’ online tool to encourage people with probable symptoms of Long Covid to seek healthcare; and an online learning tool to help healthcare professional support Long Covid patients ‘Health and Social Care PROfessional-Long Covid’.
