Today, the Patients Association has signed up to the Shared Commitment to Public Involvement in Health and Social Care Research to further public participation in research.

This shared commitment enables the health service and health and care partners to work collaboratively to increase good practice involvement, to make a difference together. 

The Patients Association is committed to working with patients, carers, the public, and health and care organisations. We’ve brought patients and carers together for a variety of projects with NHS trusts, university research teams, Integrated Care Boards and Systems, charities, NHS England, regulators, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, and the Department of Health and Social Care. 

Through focus groups, surveys, and case studies, we enable a two-way conversation between patients from diverse backgrounds and organisations, the co-creation of resources and tools, and the sharing of insights. 

We are committed to:

• Supporting organisations ensure social care and health research is influenced and informed by the experiences and views of underserved groups
• Ensuring people involved with us knows that their involvement has made a change to a project
• Working respectfully in partnership with organisations to ensure they have the skills, values, and confidence to carry out inclusive and impactful public involvement work
• Supporting patients to gain the skills, values, and confidence to be involved in inclusive and impactful public involvement.

The Shared Commitment to Public Involvement in Health and Social Care states:

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 more from each of the partners

The Academy of Medical Sciences

The Association of Medical Research Charities

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry

Bristol Health Partners

Cancer Research UK

Cochrane

Health and Care Research Wales

Health and Social Care Northern Ireland

Health Data Research UK

Health Foundation

Health Research Authority

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement

National Institute for Health and Care Research

NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria

NIHR Innovation Observatory

NHS England

NHS Research Scotland

Universities UK

UK Research and Innovation.