PPIE Award Highly Commended 2024: Anam Bhutta
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 Anam Bhutta, who has worked as a public involvement intern for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester (ARC-GM). Anam was highly commended in the newcomer category at the 2024 PPIE Awards.
Anam has played a key role in shaping projects that aim to improve health and enhance the quality and sustainability of care services. Her involvement spans several impactful initiatives; each rooted in co-production and meaningful engagement with individuals who have lived experience.
One of Anam’s most significant contributions has been to the Hidden LIVE project, an immersive performance and film that invites audiences to experience the world through the eyes of a young person grappling with mental health challenges.
Anam collaborated closely with other young people to co-create a service evaluation, ensuring that the questions asked were both sensitive and relevant. She also contributed to the collaborative analysis of qualitative data, helping to interpret findings throughout the project.
The results were positive, with the majority of viewers reporting an increased awareness of youth mental health issues. Anam is now involved in the next phase of the project, which explores the film’s potential as a mental health resource in college classrooms.
In the CORuS project, Anam has worked to co-develop an online resource for parents and carers of children with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Her contributions include analyzing parental interviews to help create a new measure of parental burden, drafting survey items, and co-designing and co-delivering workshops with parents.
Anam has also contributed to SUSTAIN, a project focused on helping service users manage hunger caused by antipsychotic medications. Her efforts have helped to ensure that the voices of those with lived experience are heard and acted upon in research.
Anam also spoke at the Faculty’s PPIE event 2025: you can watch the recording on YouTube.
Find out more:
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.
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