Bristol Health Partners joins public involvement pledge

Bristol Health Partners has joined the Health Research Authority (HRA) and a host of other leading organisations in a pledge to improve public involvement in health and social care research.

The partnership has signed up to the Shared Commitment to Public Involvement, which aims to drive up standards by improving the quality of public involvement across the health and research sector.

Read Bristol Health Partners’ pledge

It joins 17 leading health and research organisations including the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR), NHS England, and Cancer Research UK.

Dr Matt Westmore, HRA Chief Executive, says:

“It’s great to have Bristol Health Partners join our Shared Commitment to Public Involvement.

“We launched the Shared Commitment with other leading organisations, to raise the profile, value and importance of public involvement in health and social care research.

“Together we are sending a very strong message to the research system that public involvement in the design and delivery of research is essential and must be taken seriously.

“The evidence is that better research results from involvement, and better research delivers benefits for patients.”

Professor David Wynick, Director of Bristol Health Partners Academic Health Science Centre, said:

“Public involvement is at heart of everything we do at Bristol Health Partners and we are delighted to sign up to, and demonstrate our commitment to meaningful public involvement across all aspects of our partnership.

“One of our public contributors, Stephen Hill, has been involved in the Shared Commitment since its early days and is now co-chair of the steering group. We thank him for connecting the partnership with this important work.”

The Shared Commitment was developed in partnership with the HRA, leading health and social care organisations and members of the public. It launched in March 2022.

It builds on work led by the HRA in response to the reduction in public involvement seen in studies submitted for approval at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Shared Commitment, which is partially funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Recovery, Resilience and Growth (RRG) programme, includes a joint pledge to help improve the quality of public involvement, which each organisation signs up to.

Public involvement refers to 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.

Evidence shows that excellent public involvement improves the quality and impact of research.

Embedding public involvement in health and social care research

The Shared Commitment statement, signed by leaders at each organisation, reads:

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 organisations. Find out more from each of the signatories.