Barretstown partners with DCU's PPI Ignite Network

The PPI Ignite Network at DCU is delighted to welcome Barretstown as a local partner. Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) is research carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public, rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them.

The Health Research Board (HRB), in collaboration with the Irish Research Council (IRC), and higher education institutions has announced funding amounting to €5m to support the development of a network to advance public and patient involvement in all stages of health and social care research.

The PPI Ignite Network will be established by seven higher education institutions as core partners (DCU, TCD, NUIG, UL, UCC, RCSI and UCD) alongside 10 national and 54 local partners including patient, public, charity, community, education, research and health care organisations.

The aim of the National PPI Ignite Network is to create a shared voice for PPI in Ireland, to improve the quality of PPI in research and to facilitate opportunities for collaborative learning.

In keeping with DCU’s ethos to ‘transform lives and societies’, the purpose of the PPI Ignite Network @ DCU research partnership with Barretstown is:

• To expand PPI activities to the practices, processes and policies of conducting research with children, young people and families.
• To increase awareness of PPI among the Barretstown community and to co-create PPI training for Barretstown staff, children, young people and families, as relevant.
• To unpack ethical PPI in research and creative methodologies for involving children, young people and families throughout all stages of the research.
• To work together to strategically drive excellence in PPI in research activities for children, young people and families.

Barretstown and the PPI Ignite Network @ DCU will work together to find out different ways of involving children and families as active partners in research design and how best to do this. Barretstown is in an ideal position to bring forward the voices and needs of children and their families living with serious illness. This is aligned with Barretstown commitment to conduct and support high quality research and evaluation that will contribute to the development and delivery of specially designed camps and programmes for children and their families living with a serious illness.

If you would like further information on DCU’s new research partnership with Barretstown, you can contact Veronica Lambert, Professor of Children and Family Nursing and lead for the PPI Ignite Network @ DCU veronica.lambert@dcu.ie

If you would like to know more about the PPI Ignite Network @ DCU, please contact ppi@dcu.ie and visit https://www.dcu.ie/ppi