Helping you navigate, improve, and embrace public involvement

The Public Involvement Front Door combines a values-based approach with practical tips and resources to open up the world of public involvement and empower researchers of all experience levels to meaningfully involve public members in their work.

Taking a values-based approach

When done in a meaningful, equitable, and sustainable manner, public involvement can help research institutions achieve a more democratic and community-led form of knowledge production.

However, without the right mindset, resources, and support, public involvement can become tokenistic, with public members having little to no influence on actual decision making. Public involvement can also become extractive, with researchers benefitting more than or at the expense of public members.

When creating this site, we envisioned a world in which public involvement occurs with intention, moves at the speed of trust, shifts power and allows people to learn from mistakes.

To get started, choose which stage
you're at with your public involvement…

Illustration of a person stepping through a purple door with a lit lightbulb above, symbolising understanding something new

Stage 1: Understanding public involvement

Learn about what public involvement is, why it matters, and how it can help your research.

Illustration of a person holding puzzle pieces, with additional pieces floating around, symbolising planning

Stage 2: Planning your involvement

Plan the who, what, when, where, and how of your public involvement - plus consider how much time and money you'll need and how you’ll track impact throughout the project.

Illustration of a person interacting with other people online, symbolising different ways of reaching public members

Stage 3: Reaching public members

Explore how to engage with communities and form reciprocal relationships with community organisations to reach public members and involve diverse groups in your work.

Illustration of people sitting around a table looking at post-it notes, discussing ideas

Stage 4: Involving public members

Understand how to support public members leading up to, during, and after an activity, including tips on how to safeguard public members and yourself.

Illustration of three people with speech bubbles with charts and graphs, demonstrating dissemination

Stage 5: Disseminating your findings

Consider how you will share your findings with the public members you involved and how they can help you share those findings with the wider public.

Meeting the growing demand for support

There is growing interest from researchers to involve patients, carers, and the public in their research, as well as a growing expectation from funders to do so. Public involvement professionals hold a wealth of knowledge and experience around how to do this, but are often over capacity and may lack the time needed to give researchers tailored support.

We designed this site to be a first port of call for public involvement support. Concise, user-friendly, and full of practical advice and resources, we hope the site helps researchers feel empowered to carry out meaningful public involvement and frees up capacity for public involvement teams to provide tailored support where needed.

Acknowledging the challenges

We believe that with the right resources and support, anyone can carry out meaningful public involvement. At the same time, we recognise the real barriers and constraints that researchers encounter when trying to do so.

We aim to help researchers feel less alone in the challenges they may be facing and provide practical information on how to overcome them.

A group of people sitting around a table working on building something together
A doctor/nurse tending to a smiling patient

Adding a patient safety lens

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through SafetyNet, the network of the six NIHR Patient Safety Research Collaborations (PSRCs) across England. SafetyNet provides a platform that facilitates the sharing of knowledge, resources, and expertise across the PSRCs, maximising their ability to deliver highly relevant research aimed at improving patient safety. The views expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Within patient safety research, public contributors often have lived experience of avoidable medical harm which can be triggering or traumatising to recall. Therefore, there is a particular need to safeguard the wellbeing of public contributors when discussing patient safety topics, as well as with other complex and emotional topics.

Through this site, we hope to share guidance specific to the challenges faced in patient safety research, and to spotlight case studies of projects where patients and public members have been safely and meaningfully involved in patient safety research.