WIREDGOV

Working alongside people and communities is an essential tool in helping to improve the impact of our guidance and continuing to get the best care to people and communities, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.

We’ve joined the Health Research Authority, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and a host of organisations across the UK in signing up to a shared commitment to public involvement in health and social care research. Working alongside people and communities is an essential tool in helping to improve the impact of our guidance and continuing to get the best care to people and communities, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.

Dr Sam Roberts, chief executive of NICE, yesterday said:

We are committed to achieving a best-practice approach to public involvement and engagement. This is essential in helping to improve the impact of our guidance and continue to get the best care to patients, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer. We are therefore, delighted to be part of this collaboration that shares our vision in achieving better public and community involvement in health and social care research.

The shared commitment: embedding public involvement in health and social care research

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 a briefing from the NHS Health Research Authority has shown that it improves 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 aim to support the research community to carry out excellent public involvement. We will provide or share guidance, policies, systems, and incentives. We also plan to:

• 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.

This commitment will be embedded into the decision-making processes of our organisations.