Patients and the public

Working with patients and the public

Good healthcare research matters. People who live with the health conditions we research or are affected by the policies we are working on are experts on how our work can be relevant and meaningful. We involve the public in shaping what we do and how we do it. We also partner with public involvement groups from other universities.

Weight Management Panel

This is a group of people with experience of living with obesity and trying to manage their weight or change their diet to improve their health. The panel helps us design research about diet, weight management and health. As a small “thank you” to the panel we regularly send email newsletters to keep them informed about our research. We are always looking for new people to join the panel, so if you would like to find out more, please email: hb_team@phc.ox.ac.uk

Participatory research

We are always looking for new ways we can work with the public to address health challenges effectively. This includes researching the best ways to design events that involve members of the public such as citizens’ juries and assemblies, and the COPPER project where we worked with members of the public and policy-makers to design different food policies.

Here are some examples of our work in this area:

• POWER: asking members of the public, researchers, doctors, nurses, and policy makers to tell us what is are their priorities for research about body weight and obesity.
• COPPER: working with the public to co-design tax and subsidy policies to support healthy sustainable diets.
• Developing powerful PPIE partnerships in the design of an inclusive weight management service.

Involving diverse communities

We partner with the 'Deep End' Research Network at Sheffield, which specifically focuses on including underserved populations in research. Our long-term goal is to set up a similar group in Oxford. We have recently been awarded a programme development grant (PDG) with our colleagues at Sheffield to support underserved communities in Sheffield and Oxford to develop their own research ideas about type 2 diabetes remission.

Patient Advisory Groups

Several of our studies set up Patient Advisory Groups which include people with lived experience of certain health conditions. These groups help us to design our research, take participants’ views into account, and communicate what we discover with the wider public.