Consumer and Community Involvement in health research projects
What is Consumer and Community Involvement in health research?
Consumer and community involvement in health research is about ensuring that consumers and community members have a say in the research conducted and that the research best supports consumer and community needs and interests.
Consumers and researchers work together to provide the best value for, and have the greatest impact on, the wider community. Consumers can be involved from the very beginning such as forming questions and co-designing studies with researchers, and throughout all stages of the research process.
What does it look like?
Consumers can be involved at any stage of the research cycle shown below. The level of involvement will vary depending on the consumer’s role and the type of research study.
Consumers can help identify and prioritise research questions. Examples include:
- participating in and sharing ideas at relevant consumer/community consultations
- becoming a member of a health consumer panel.
Consumers can help make sure research plans are practical and achievable. Examples include:
- helping to write or comment on funding applications
- contributing to participant-facing documents to make sure they are easy to understand
- assisting in the design of research tools.
Members of Project Steering Committees and Reference Groups contribute to these activities.
There are many ways that consumers can be involved in conducting the research. Examples include:
- co-facilitating focus groups with community members
- assisting with the recruitment of study participants (including promotion)
- the collection of data and its analysis
This is where Health Consumer Fellows play an integral role.
Consumers can help researchers communicate research findings. Examples include:
- co-writing plain language summaries of the research and its results
- sharing this information widely to their networks
- giving talks to community groups
Consumers can also advocate for research findings to be translated into policy and practice.
Researchers need to hear consumer and community member’s thoughts on future topics for research. Consumers can also help to obtain funding for future research.
Consumer and community network register
We invite you to register your interest in our consumer and community network and tell us about the areas you are interested in and how you might like to be involved. We will contact you to discuss how we can work together.
