We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Kristin Liabo as our new deputy director. As our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Team (PPIE) Lead Kristin is a pivotal part of PenARC, inspiring others with her enthusiasm for, and dedication to, improving the quality of our research, and outcomes for patients, by including patients and public in our work.
“I am energised by what happens when researchers, practitioners and public collaborators meet and inspire one another.”
Dr Liabo with the PPIE team: from l to r: Kate Boddy, Tanya Hynd, Kristin Liabo, Naomi Morley, Georgia Jenkins, Annette Gillett
Kristin leads our PPIE team in supporting and encouraging members of the public to participate, not just as data providers but in the prioritisation, planning and implementation of studies, and to ask the question, ‘who decides what we should know?’.
Kristin said:
“Since its inception, PenARC has shown commitment to public involvement and engagement. My appointment shows that this commitment remains as strong as ever and I hope to strengthen it even further, drawing on my background in social care to influence developments. Climate change will increasingly impact on all aspects of our lives, especially on our health so it’s important that we begin to consider climate change and the environment in the research we do.
I am energised by what happens when researchers, practitioners and public collaborators meet and inspire one another. I see this as a vital part of PenARC’s role in connecting service use, need, provision and improvement through research, building up cross-boundary work between researchers and services.
I enjoy seeing the practical benefits of research in action too, for example a ward manager telling the statistician how helpful it is to have their data analysed, or a public collaborator telling a professor how excited they are about a newly funded research study.
“Since its inception, PenARC has shown commitment to public involvement and engagement”
Asked about her hopes for her new role Kristin said:
“When it comes down to it, PenARC, like all organisations, is a bunch of humans put together into a kind of system. I hope that we can jointly figure out what the best form of this system is, so it works well both for those we intend to help and for we who are in it.”
We are committed to involving patients, service users, carers and family members in our research and our PPIE Team support our researchers and students to embed meaningful involvement into everything we do. We also support our Patient and Public Engagement Group (PenPEG), a group of patients, service users and carers who volunteer to ensure our research is relevant to the needs of the community.
Video
Patient and public involvement and engagement is integral to our work at PenARC.
Watch this video to understand just what this means for our research:
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