PPI opportunities

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Events

Webinar – Save the date!

What does research tell us about maintaining a healthy weight?
Date: Thursday 3 April 2025 Time: 6-7pm

Public Contributor needed for PREVENT-Breast project

We are looking for one or two PPI members based in and around Cambridge to join one existing PPI member in Cambridge to contribute to the PREVENT Breast project, that focuses on gathering evidence on how best to introduce breast cancer risk assessment into the NHS for women under the age of 50 years.

There will also be other PPIE members based in Manchester so there will be opportunities to work as a larger PPIE group during the project.  Researchers at the University of Manchester and Cambridge University are doing some research with young women between the ages of 30-49 to assess how best to introduce a breast cancer risk assessment into the NHS.

This research is called the PREVENT-Breast study. Currently women aged 50 can access breast screening via the NHS. Those who are younger than 50 can access screening if they are deemed eligible based on their family history. However, only around one in ten women at high or above-average risk are identified through this current pathway of care. This means that lots of women who are at increased risk are missing out on being diagnosed earlier. If we could identify these women earlier than aged 50 years then we could potentially reduce the chances of women dying from the disease.

There is also evidence that some groups of women, particularly those from deprived areas and ethnic minority groups, are more likely to miss out. We therefore need better ways to identify these women and help them access a breast cancer risk assessment if they want it.  The aim of this three-year project is to gather evidence on how best to introduce breast cancer risk assessment into the NHS for women under the age of 50 years.  The research team wish to ask you to support this study by considering being a PREVENT-Breast Public Contributor. 

We are hoping the PPI members will be able to commit to work with us until the end of the study in September 2026. Attendance at meetings.

We plan to hold 3-4 PPIE meetings during the project. These will most likely all be held remotely and will last approximately 1-1.5 hours each. We might ask you to review at home a few documents such as results from qualitative and/or quantitative research in order to discuss them at a meeting.

Our target audience:

• Having the experience of long-term anxiety and/or depression
• Being a female between the ages of 30 and 50
• An interest in research in mental health and how that might be associated with improvements in breast cancer prevention
• Breadth of understanding and tolerance of viewpoints from others
• Willingness to participate in group discussions and develop ideas
•  Access to a computer and email”

We are offering £25 per hour when attending face to face or Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings. You will also receive a payment of £5 for internet costs should meetings take place online. The researcher present at these meetings will help the members claim for this.

Please contact Dr Maria Valasaki, email address: mv597@cam.ac.uk (9am-5pm)

Involvement opportunity

Bowel Research UK

Deadline: 13^th January 2025

The final survey has been launched to discover what matters to you around diverticular disease.

Please fill in this short survey to help shape the future of diverticular disease research before 13th January: http://surveymonkey.com/r/DDPSP_Priorities_GutsUK

Participation opportunity

Primary Care Unit, University of Cambridge

We’re exploring views on medical relationships, disease symptoms, hormones, and health through 3 studies:

• Clinicians – http://bit.ly/MM_CLIN2024
• People without autoimmune diseases – https://bit.ly/MM_PATIENTS2024
• People without autoimmune disease – http://bit.ly/MM_GENPOP2024

Other

Patient Experience Library

NHS England’s latest waiting list data (Oct 2024) was published. 

To find waiting times for the treatments you need at Trusts near you, check our waiting list tracker:   www.patientlibrary.net/waitinglists  

Open access and free to use!

Cambridge Children’s Hospital

The end-of-year newsletter is out now – and it’s a cracker! Grab a hot drink and relax with our top stories, beautiful photos, amazing videos, and a reflection of how far we’ve come in 2024.

Enjoy: https://tinyurl.com/32uyfw23

Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute

We’ve had lots of fun creating our 2024 Institute ‘Wrapped’

Seeing all the data in one place is a great reminder of what everyone’s hard work has achieved!

From 110 journal publications, to 25 BILLION cells sorted by Flow Cytometry, watch our video to see our year in numbers!

Watch here: https://youtu.be/1OM8b7GL38g

‪NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre

A happy & peaceful festive season to all our colleagues, followers & supporters!

We’ve put together a snapshot of some of our key research stories & events over the year.

Visit https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/looking-back-over-2024-a-year-in-highlights/ to read more about our discoveries & successes in 2024.

East of England Cancer Alliance

We are pleased to announce a pioneering new project to tackle cancers among the homeless in East of England. Specially trained Health Navigators will work from health centres and homelessness services, in Cambridge, Peterborough, Wisbech and King’s Lynn.

Watch here: https://t.co/ADkVLuX7PP

Researchers

Ethnicity Inclusion online training

Tuesday 25 Feb 2025 from 11.00 am to 12.30 (Cambridge case studies)
Wednesday 4 June 2025 from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm (Oxford Health case studies)

Calling all Cambridge and Oxford-based researchers: Join our collaborative online EDI training on practical tools for ethnicity inclusion in health research.

Limited places! Email  Georgina with your preferred date gan23@cam.ac.uk to receive a link to register ( Note this training is repeated with different case studies)

Call for Project Applications!

We’re inviting projects needing health data from East of England. Data available in OMOP CDM or original format, with support for curation & analysis in the SDE.

Priority: Projects with the greatest public benefit!

For further information, email: cuh.eoe.sde@nhs.net