Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Forum June 2026 update

by Web team (LB) | Jul 13, 2026 | PPIE Forum | 0 comments

What is the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Forum?

The Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Forum plays an essential role in delivering the Faculty’s PPIE Action Plan and Social Responsibility (SR) Plan. Together, these strategies outline our commitment to driving positive environmental and social change for our local and global communities through our world-leading teaching, learning and research.

The Forum is co-chaired by Dr Omolade Allen (Academic Lead for Civic and Community Engagement and Involvement) and Mike Southworth (public contributor), bringing together Public Contributors (PCs), University staff and students, as well as external stakeholders to discuss and shape the Faculty’s PPIE priorities.

Highlights from the June meeting

The third and final Forum meeting of the 2025/26 academic year was held in-person in June. The session was delivered in a workshop format to allow interactive discussions, with a focus on reviewing the Forum and its future direction.

The Ideas Fund

The meeting began with a presentation from guest speaker Paolo Arru, PPIE Manager at VOCAL. He introduced The Ideas Fund, a learning fund established in 2021 by the British Science Association and funded by Wellcome. Designed to move away from traditional research-led schemes, the fund focuses on bringing communities and researchers together for more equitable, collaborative projects on mental wellbeing.

Paolo leads The Ideas Fund in Oldham, which has supported 16 community-research partnerships to date. Examples include work with women’s groups exploring decolonisation in research, and the Men Behaving Dadly project, which produced a wellbeing journal for fathers.

The talk concluded with The Ideas Fund framework for reimagining research, presented as three interconnected strands: reimagining the research process, the purpose of research and relationships.

Forum members responded positively to The Ideas Fund and engaged in discussion regarding how community-led research priorities are identified. Questions included how to “narrow it down to decide what to take forward” when working with diverse community groups, and how organisations can effectively engage with grassroots partners. In response, Paolo emphasised that The Ideas Fund creates an ecosystem where communities feel able to define their own research questions.

Evolving the PPIE Forum

Following the talk, FBMH Social Responsibility Project Officer Sam Franklin and Omolade gave a brief overview of the PPIE Forum, including its history, structure and key duties. This provided a foundation for the central discussion of this meeting: What do members think about the current priorities of the Forum, and how should they evolve to better meet future needs?

A general consensus was reached regarding the overall role of the Forum. While providing strategic direction was a high priority in the past, PPIE has since become more established across the Faculty and University. Members agreed that the Forum could continue feeding into strategic decisions but with a shift to a more operational focus.

This aligns with the Forum’s objectives of sharing best practice and providing PPIE advice and guidance, which members noted are the Forum’s core strengths and the main reasons people come to it for support. Another priority that members highlighted is monitoring and compliance, with a key suggestion to audit all existing activities, resources and partnerships. The Forum could play a role in addressing any identified gaps and bringing together fragmented activity that is happening across different groups in the Faculty, ensuring existing expertise is more visible and accessible.

The 2026 Social Responsibility Conference

The meeting closed with a note on the Faculty’s upcoming Social Responsibility Conference, which is returning for a second year following last year’s success. The event will be held on 30th September, save the date.