Discover your role

In 2020 Health and Care Research Wales published an action plan which set out how to improve public involvement and engagement in Welsh health and social care research. This plan, called Discover Your Role in Health and Social Care Research, was created in collaboration with members of the public, researchers and research administrators, and sets out actions to take across seven focus areas.

You can read more about this on our blog post.

The first focus area outlines the need for a more coherent network for public involvement discussions where people can share good practice and get support. From this, a plan for setting up a Public Engagement and Involvement Forum for Wales was developed.

Several Forum's have now taken place and full details of the presentations and discussions from each Forum can be found below.

March 2022

The March 2022 Forum offered an opportunity to reflect on developments one year on from the publication of ‘Discover Your Role in Health and Care Research Action Plan’. There was a discussion panel with a Q&A and an interactive session on evaluating the impact of the Action Plan.

What difference does it make? Public involvement in Health and Care Research Wales Funding schemes (PDF)

Responses from question and answer session

November 2021

On 04 and 11 November 2021 the second successful public engagement and involvement Forum was held.

Focus for the Forum was on Focus Area 2 – Ensuring public involvement is promoted and supported at senior levels across Health and Care Research Wales, split into 3 action points:

Action point 2.1 - Set expectations around the roles of researchers to promote public involvement

Action point 2.2 - Ensure there is appropriate public member representation on high level governance of Health and Care Research Wales

Action point 2.3 - Make connections into undergraduate and postgraduate education to promote the value of research and public involvement as a key aspect of training

Presentations from the day are below:

Discover your role in Health and Social Care Research: Agreed focus areas (PDF)

Peter Gee

Public involvement training and guidance - what's out there? (PDF)

Rebecca Burns

Public engagement strategy overview (PDF)

Hannah Bertie

Payment for public contributors in Health and Social care (PDF)

Reshma Raycoba

Championing research involvement (PDF)

Matthias Eberl

Involving the public in shaping public involvement (PDF)

Jeremy Segrott

May 2021

On 11 and 13 May 2021 Health and Care Research Wales held the First Public engagement and Involvement Forum following the successful Forum launch on 26 January 2021.

The themes discussed were, involvement of members of the public in prioritising research and research questions and how this impacts policy and practice, as well as hearing from the INCLUDE project about who our under-served communities are and how we can make sure they are informed and enabled to take part in research as well as from researchers who have successfully engaged with these communities.

You can view all of the presentations below.

What you told us - Discover Your Role prioritisation survey (PDF)

Reshma Raycoba, Head of Public Involvement, NHS Research Governance and Digital (Acting), Welsh Government

Developing a Public Engagement Strategy (PDF)

Felicity Waters, Head of Communications, Engagement and Involvement, Health and Care Research Wales

Tackling administrative barriers (PDF)

Reshma Raycoba, Head of Public Involvement, NHS Research Governance and Digital (Acting), Welsh Government

Forum topics 11 May

How the public are involved in prioritising health and social care research (PDF)

Emma Small, Senior Prioritisation and Dissemination Manager; Welsh Government

Chris Kemp-Philip, Public Contributor

Young people are at the centre of DECIPHer activities (PDF)