In this blog series, we will be featuring our award winners and highly commended recipients from the Faculty’s ‘Outstanding Contribution to PPIE’ awards. The awards showcase inspirational and outstanding commitment to PPIE that has made a positive difference to our community and highlights the amazing events, activities, people and groups from across the Faculty.   

Our latest blog in this series features Lucy Hulme and Hannah Brennan née Talbot, founders of the Health Behaviour Change Professional and Public Advisory Group (HBC-PPAG). Lucy and Hannah were winners in the newcomer category at the 2025 PPIE Awards. 

Lucy and Hannah are postgraduate researchers (PGRs) at the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology, The University of Manchester. Early on in their research, they recognised the difficulty of embedding PPIE into practice due to the time and resource constraints of PhD students. 

To tackle this, they created the Health Behaviour Change Professional and Public Advisory Group (HBC-PPAG), recently renamed to PPrEG. This group aims to involve relevant professionals and public contributors in their PhD research, with a focus on psychology and maternity healthcare communication.   

Lucy and Hannah with their PPIE Award

Through the HBC-PPAG, Lucy and Hannah gained practical insights from maternity service users, midwives, and GPs, enabling them to design meaningful data collection strategies that became increasingly accessible and inclusive over time. This collaboration ensured that women with lived experiences and key stakeholders remained at the heart of their research, while giving contributors a genuine opportunity to shape the studies that matter to them. 

Following the success of the HBC-PPAG, Lucy and Hannah became key PGR leads of larger funded PPIE outreach projects. In these roles, they not only supported PPIE activities but also helped other PGRs develop essential skills and build meaningful relationships with communities.  

The impact of the HBC-PPAG does not end here. Lucy and Hannah also organised their reflections and documentations of running PPIE outreach initiatives into useful resource packs for PGRs who may want to kickstart their own PPIE journey. To date, their achievements include: 

• Securing funding for an animation illustrating how PPIE can be innovatively used within systematic reviews. 

• Presented a reflection on challenges and strategies for embedding PPIE in qualitative health research at the 2025 Qualitative Methods in Psychology Conference (hosted by The British Psychological Society). 

• Designing and delivering a PGR-focused PPIE workshop. 

• Developing a PGR PPIE toolkit aimed at making PPIE achievable within the constraints of a PhD timeframe. 

Additional information: 

• Manchester Centre for Health Psychology 

• PhD Journeys: Getting Started ep.1 with Hannah Talbot 

• PhD Journeys: Getting Started ep.2 with Lucy Hulme 

To find out more about PPIE: watch our short film, sign up to the monthly Public Engagement Digest, visit the PPIE blog, or contact srbmh@manchester.ac.uk.       

To read more about other PPIE Award winners visit here. 

Related