NIHR Cambridge BRC
Our BRC has a PPIE/communications support team (4.6 FTE), including a PPIE Lead (Dr Amanda Stranks), who support central PPIE activities, advise researchers on their PPI plans and drive our communication and dissemination strategy. The core budget supports payment and reimbursement of our CUH PPIE panel, through which we provide an inclusive range of PPI opportunities open to all across our region, our PPIE training programme for researchers and contributors, and seed funding for PPIE activities. We are also investing in a new role of ‘Inclusive Research Lead’ (band 7, 1.0 FTE) to support our ambitious plans to improve EDI across our research. The inclusivity lead will work alongside our PPIE team, PPIE Champions and regional partners to build long-term relationships with diverse and historically excluded communities.
The CUH PPI panel currently has around 70 members, and is open to anyone across the East of England who is interested in getting involved in research. Researchers at the BRC and CRF are able to involve the panel in their research projects, with the costs for this involvement covered centrally through our PPI budget. The PPIE team also support researchers to directly recruit public contributors with relevant lived experience to be involved in research projects and funding applications supported through the BRC and CRF.
In collaboration with our Training and Development Team, we provide both introductory and more targeted PPI training to researchers across Cambridge. Our core offering currently covers topics such as PPIE activities, planning inclusive PPIE and capturing and sharing impact of PPIE. All sessions have been co-developed with our public members and involve a public contributor in their delivery. We also provide support to our investigators to design induction and training for their public contributors.
We support our public contributors through biannual meetings to review progress against our strategy and co-design activities for the following 6 months. Contributors are invited to build their skills through our research information sessions, which cover topics that arise frequently across our research projects (such as Artificial Intelligence, the role of the Research Ethics Committee and how medical devices are regulated) or as requested by our public members.
We will also fund themes to use Thiscovery, an innovative digital research platform designed by The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute in Cambridge to enable coalitions of patients, community groups and researchers to come together through online engagement/involvement activities. The platform is being used successfully by our themes working with contributors who sometimes struggle with physical meetings, including frail elderly people and their carers, the mentally ill and people living with obesity.
NIHR Cambridge CRF
Our CRF funds a dedicated PPIE Lead (Caroline McMahon), Communications specialist (Band 6×0.2) and Staff PPI champions for each CRF unit. The research champions deliver programs of work aligned to our PPI strategy. In addition, members of the wider CRF team help with delivery of PPIE activities on an ad hoc basis.
The CRF also resources the Participant Survey, allowing participants in research taking place at the Clinical Research Facility to share their experiences of participation.