The Faculty celebrated the positive impact staff, students and Public Contributors have made in PPIE at its annual Celebration event attended by more than 80 people, including collaborators from the local community, staff and students.

The theme of the event was ‘Be Inspired, Be Involved’ and featured talks from patient and public groups H@PPI and PRIMER and also from researchers within the Faculty. Dr Anne-Marie Martindale and artist Lucy Burscough discussed how they use arts and science to explore facial ‘disfigurements’ and Professor Anthony Jones used magic tricks to demonstrate how the brain has the power to deal with chronic pain.

Ailsa Donnelly, Public Contributor, commented “The event was interesting, inspiring and invigorating!  It was fascinating and very impressive to see the work being done across the Faculty, and also to see how it is growing and expanding year on year at such a steady rate.” 

The event also hosted the first PPIE advice clinic where researcher Dr Ellena Badrick requested advice from attendees regarding how to innovatively promote a patient and public survey and to get representation from the hard to reach groups.

The University’s Director of Social Responsibility, Dr Julian Skyrme, described the event as “inspiring with a rich programme of activities which recognised and validated the critical work the public deliver for the Faculty through their involvement in so many research and education projects.”

The event concluded with an awards ceremony celebrating the highlights of PPIE in 4 categories; Public Contributors, staff, student and group.

Winners and highly commended nominees were:

Public Contributors:

Winner: Carole Bennett (Chair of PRIMER PPI group)

During her time as the lay chair of PRIMER, the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group for the Centre for Primary Care, Carole has been a passionate advocate for better co-ordination of care, follow-up care and mental health assessment and has been involved with flagship projects within the Centre focusing on these issues. Carole’s impact extends beyond our Faculty, as she collaborates and coordinates with other organisations across the UK and beyond to promote PPIE.

Highly Commended: Lindsey Brown (MAHSE, PRIMER and teaching and learning)

Lindsey is co-chair of the MAHSE Patient Forum, a member of the PRIMER group, and uses her skills and experience in PPIE to improve both student experience and teaching. She has been instrumental in embedding lay communication and language skills in the curriculum of Clinical Immunology, bringing her wide experience as a patient representative to engage the students.

Highly Commended: Marsha McAdam (NewMind Network for Mental Health Technologies)

Marsha has been involved in the NewMind Network, which brings together clinicians, researchers, service users, charities and the NHS to explore the potential for technology to improve diagnosis, treatment and alleviation of mental ill health, for two years. In that time she has participated in Proposal Development Sandpits, sat on funding panels, spoken at events and developed strong networks.

Staff:

Winner: David Allison and Roger Harrison (Action on Antibiotic Drug Resistance: One Student, One Campus, One World)

Roger Harrison and David Allison have worked tirelessly to get both staff and students engaging with local people and communities to raise awareness and increase learning about antibiotic drug resistance. A large proportion of their work has included leading teams of students to run workshops and activities in local schools, and their work has led to over 6,000 individual conversations with members of the public.

Highly Commended – Jo Pennock (Commitment to PPIE)

Jo Pennock has been delivering and creating PPIE Events for over 10 years, raising the profile of University research nationally. She designed an interactive ‘Outbreak’ event where members of the public had to work as part of a control team, solving clues and making decisions, to control an epidemic. She has also co-developed a series of activities for her students to give them the skills, attitude and understanding they need to embed PPIE in their future practice.

Highly Commended Ellen Poliakoff (PPIE in Parkinson’s disease and beyond: Leading by example)

Ellen has developed PPIE activities for over 10 years and collaborates with people with Parkinson’s disease to increase the impact of her research and teaching. Her lecture with Mathew Sullivan, a researcher with Parkinson’s, was developed into a short film to be used as a teaching resource. Ellen has initiated and developed numerous public engagement events like the Big Brain Summer School, now in its 11^th year.

Student:

Winner: Kirsty McIntyre (‘Have you heard?’ Project and ‘A day in the life of a placenta scientist’)

Kirsty has made outstanding contributions to both science communication and public involvement. She co-developed a project called ‘Have You Heard?’ which aims to make research findings clearer and more accessible to underserved communities and has shared her research with over 6,000 people through her video ‘A Day In My Life as a Placenta Scientist’. She has also facilitated public involvement in maternal and fetal health research and reached over 500 pupils through her widening participation fellowship and The Brilliant Club.

Highly Commended: Erin Beeston (History of the Museum of Science and Industry)

Erin has made impressive use of her position on a collaborative doctoral studentship, co-supervised with the Museum of Science and Industry, to bring her research to public audiences while supporting the Museum’s wider efforts in local community engagement. Erin has worked with older members of the public who recall the site’s days as complex, acquiring valuable interview material for her PhD while contributing to wider community networking and engagement efforts. She co-developed and ran a historical guided tour of the site, which has proved a popular part of the Manchester Science Festival.

Group:

Winner: autism@manchester (Autism@Manchester co-produced initiatives)

Autism@Manchester is a collaborative network of people with autism, their family and carers, researchers and clinicians working together to achieve quality research with real meaning to people with autism. They have developed a wide range of co-produced initiatives involving public and academic partnerships and have produced workshops and educational publications and resources to increase the involvement of the autistic community in all stages of autism research.

Highly Commended: PRIMER (The PRIMER Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group at the Centre for Primary Care)

PRIMER is a patient-led group working with researchers to promote the involvement of the public in shaping primary care research. To date PRIMER has advised on over 94 projects as well as inspiring a number of research projects and studentships of its own. In 2017 they launched PRIME, a training programme for Undergraduate Medical students which was the first of its kind in the UK. PRIMER has also delivered two Patient Hack Days, giving the public the unique opportunity to work with FBMH researchers to turn their own ideas for research into early stage research proposals.

Highly Commended: datasaveslives (#DataSavesLives: Engaging and involving the public for trustworthy health data research) 

The PPIE team at the Centre for Health Informatics work closely with Public Contributors and panels, including the H@PPI Public Contributor group, to design and deliver PPIE activities for the Centre’s major data science projects. Their work has facilitated the involvement of Public contributors as valued co-investigators in projects like the ‘Wearable Clinic’ project. The team have also delivered health data-themed public-facing community events, facilitated public panels, conducted citizen’s juries and delivered major citizen science projects, including BritainBreathing and CityMoves.

To find out more about the Faculty’s PPIE events, training and involvement opportunities, you can sign up to our monthly digest, visit our website, follow us on twitter or email srbmh@manchester.ac.uk. For further PPIE resources, visit the Faculty’s PPIE Toolkit.

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