Community Engagement in Primary Care

The University of Oxford values community engagement as a key feature of health research with communities and patients (University of Oxford, 2024). This approach is based on a vision of engagement that is purposeful, collaborative and one which makes a positive change. 

Although there are many definitions of community engagement, at its simplest community engagement in health research is about involving a “community”, or “communities”, into initiatives, consultations to shape the design and delivery of health programmes.

 What does community engagement in medical research involve?

• Involving communities throughout the health research process and not just at the initial consultation.
• Building mutually beneficial relationships between health service and stakeholders built on trust.
• Provision of feedback on progress and development on outcomes of health research.

Why community engagement of value to medical research?

• Outreach via community engagement addresses gaps in traditional PPIE approaches enabling inclusion of populations and communities that face additional barriers to participation in PPIE.
• Community engagement enables trust to be built between health organisations, and communities, where historically some communities had felt health research was too distant for them to influence.
• Greater trust and engagement lead to production of health research that is relevant to the communities it is being targeted at.

The Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS) Cancer Theme will promote the two core values of University of Oxford Public and Community Engagement with Research strategy 2024-2029 by:

Nurturing our engagement environment

• Developing respectful collaborative partnerships at local, regional and national level to inform national health policy.
• Actively including diverse and marginalised “communities” (communities of place, shared experience and identity), in to our research.
• Promoting transparency and openness in our research practice.

Improving our engagement practice

• Using multiple, flexible and customised community engagement methods, including outreach approaches to include marginalised communities.
• Providing feedback, through a range of accessible formats and methods.
• Improving accessibility to health research by addressing barriers (practical and financial) to participation.

Three Community Outreach events were undertaken by the Cancer Theme. Three locations were selected for the prevalence of health inequalities based on the Core 20 Plus 5 strategy (NHS England, 2021).

The aim of the events was to explore the views and experiences of the public about cancer testing in NHS General Practice and other community settings.

The following report highlights the findings from all areas, whilst the additional three summary reports provide brief summaries of events in Leicester, Penzance and Tower Hamlets. 

Keith Sparrow (@sparrowmanga) worked with the group in Penzance to depict responses and opinions shared throughout the day.

The LGBTQ+ community is a marginalised group that is under-served in cancer research. Consequently, we do not know if our research benefits LGBTQ+ patients. Our Cancer Theme attended four Pride festivals over Summer 2025 (Oxford, London, Reading, and Derby).

Our aim to was speak to the LGBTQ+ public about barriers and enablers to cancer research involvement and encourage participation.

You can read our blog about the events here.

LGBTQ+ people contributed short take-home verbal statements on research, cancer, healthcare, involvement, and more. We compiled these into a music piece-download the music by clicking the link below:

SPCR PRIDE Music-Full version

SPCR PRIDE Music-Short version