Comment: Researching with purpose: what is the point of public involvement?

By Jo Cairns On Wednesday, 5th April Alcohol Research UK will be hosting a national conference on public involvement in alcohol research.  Here our new Senior Research and Policy Officer, Jo Cairns, describes her journey from conventional academic researcher to someone with a passion for working with the public. Since finishing my PhD in 2012, I have for the most part enjoyed doing research and have worked on a variety of projects seeking to better understand and prevent health inequalities, from systematic reviews to statistical analyses.  I have often craved interaction with real people rather than numbers in a spreadsheet, but it is only recently that I have become committed to public involvement in research. My transition came after volunteering with The Fells, a site of Changing Lives (a national organisation working with people experiencing homelessness and addiction).  My job as Client Engagement Facilitator involved training clients to become researchers in their own right – rather than doing the research myself. Throughout my PhD, I developed a strong awareness of the importance of working with people to enhance research – after all, it’s individuals and communities who are experiencing the issues we are trying to change so it makes perfect sense that we use their invaluable experiential knowledge not only as data but also to inform the research we are doing. This can be challenging, especially when academics are often perceived to be the ‘experts’ by t...
Source: Alcohol Research UK - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Conference News Source Type: news