Our commitment to embedding public involvement in health and social care research
Our pledge to place public involvement and community engagement at the heart of our research activities.
Funders, regulators and research organisations who play a role in UK health and social care research have come together, working with members of the public, to develop and sign up to a shared commitment to improve public involvement in research.
In October 2022, the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC) joined this group, and signed up to this shared commitment to place public involvement and community engagement (PICE) at the heart of our research activities.
As an Applied Research Collaboration, we already work carefully and considerately to ensure that public involvement and community engagement is at the very centre of everything we do. By signing up to this shared commitment, we aim to strengthen this work even further.
This is our shared commitment:
Embedding Public Involvement in Health and Social Care Research
Public involvement is important, expected and possible in all types of health and social care research.
Together our organisations and members fund, support and regulate health and social care research. This statement is our joint commitment to improve the extent and quality of public involvement across the sector so that it is consistently excellent.
People have the right to be involved in all health and social care research. Excellent public involvement is an essential part of health and social care research and has been shown to improve its quality and impact. People’s lived experiences should be a key driver for health and social care research.
When we talk about public involvement, we mean all the ways in which the research community works together with people including patients, carers, advocates, service users, and members of the community.
Excellent public involvement is inclusive, values all contributions, ensures people have a meaningful say in what happens and influences outcomes, as set out in the UK Standards for Public Involvement.
Working together we will support the research community to carry out excellent public involvement. We will provide or share guidance, policies, systems, and incentives.
We will:
- listen to and learn from the people and communities we involve and apply and share that learning
- build and share the evidence of how to involve the public and the impact this has
- support improvements in equality, diversity, and inclusion in public involvement
- promote the UK Standards for Public Involvement
We will embed this commitment into the decision-making processes of our organisation.