Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement lead sets out plans for expansion

Heather Parsons recently became the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Lead, Research. Her team’s vision is to put public partnerships at the heart of all of the work ARC Wessex undertakes by supporting:

• The recruitment and support of public contributors and participants to research projects

• Public members to become research champions

• People to put the voice of lived experience in every aspect of our work at strategic, theme and project levels.

To achieve this we are building ambitious plans that increase engagement with the communities we serve, develop relationships with organisations and people who currently have less of a voice in research and provide opportunities for all PPIE work to flourish and impact research agendas. We also want to improve our evaluation and reporting and so recognise the need to capture the fantastic work that is already in place. This is particularly important as it will enable us to both to report back and to plan forward accurately.

Central to all that we do is high quality communication that allows relationships to develop and is central to sharing good practice. We are looking forward to capturing and sharing PPIE stories and experiences.

Several new members of staff have joined team and we are working together to create an innovative and exciting road map for the team that will enable us to help all ARC Wessex projects have access to high quality PPIE support and training as we enter 2023.

Contact the PPIE team here: PPIEsupport@uhs.nhs.uk

Heather makes the essential point that we are only patients when we are in front of a clinician, the rest of the time we're people