Making the patient central: Mark Stafford-Watson Public Contributor and PPI Champion

Article by Martin Simpson-Scott, PPI Coordinator NIHR CLAHRC Wessex

Mark Stafford-Watson

Mark Stafford-Watson is one of our NIHR CLAHRC Wessex public contributors. He’s also ‘PPI Champion’ for our Theme 1 research team (Integrated Respiratory Care) – of particular personal relevance to Mark, as he has a long-term respiratory condition.

It’s the taking part that counts – How using social networks might support mental health recovery. Sandra Walker writes about how her research took an unexpected turn.

Managing our mental health is something we all do and for many of us it is a fairly straightforward process, but a significant number of us are likely to find it rather more complex, sometimes  needing support from our GP or mental health services. As part of our research in CLAHRC Wessex we’re looking at how people use their social networks to improve and manage their mental health.

Involving patients and the public in research: Reflecting back and looking ahead

By Claire Ballinger and Mark Stafford-Watson – Chairs, Wessex Inclusion in Service Design and Delivery (WISeRD) group

It’s the end of our first year in CLAHRC Wessex, we have been thinking about our progress in involving patients and the public in our work (or PPI as it’s called), and reviewing where our focus should be for the coming year.  We have settled on five strategic aims:

• Develop our capacity for patient and public involvement (PPI) in research and implementation programmes
• Promote our CLAHRC Wessex activities to the wider public (public engagement)
• Evolve and measure ways to include patients and the public to identify research priorities
• Develop a group of patient and public researchers
• Measure the impact of patient and public involvement within CLAHRC Wessex