Our commitment to you and Patient & Public Involvement
Our commitment to you and Patient & Public Involvement
In March 2022, we were involved in an exciting development to strengthen the importance of public and patient involvement across the UK. We’re proud to announce that along with the Health Research Authority, the National Institute for Health Research, and a host of other organisations, we’ve signed up to a shared commitment to public involvement.
We’re committed to driving up standards in health and social care research and believe excellent patient involvement is inclusive, values all contributions and ensures people affected by cancer have a say in what happens.
The statement, signed by leaders at each organisation, reads:
“Public involvement is important, expected and possible in all types of health and social care research.
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.”
You can find more from each of the signatories – and what they will do - by clicking on the links below:
- The Academy of Medical Sciences
- The Association of Medical Research Charities
- The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
- Health and Care Research Wales
- Health and Social Care Northern Ireland
- Health Research Authority
- Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement
- National Institute for Health Research
- NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria
- NHS Research Scotland
- Universities UK
- UK Research and Innovation
Cancer Research UK has created a Statement of intent for patient and public involvement. This highlights our commitment to involving people affected by cancer in our research and details how we will do this.