November 2, 2021
Autumn's last month brings darker and colder days, as well as plenty of co-production events and projects to banish any chills and brighten the greyest of days.
November is already off to a great start for our Collective!
Yesterday (1 Nov) we spent 90mins together discussing collective responsibility in research, the importance of honest and open conversations at the beginning of co-production projects, and many other thought-provoking topics at our Co-Pro Cuppa. We love seeing lots of you joining Cuppas for the very first time, alongside many familiar faces - it always makes the discussions even richer and more dynamic. As usual, the time flew by, so naturally we’re already looking forward to the next session on 2 December. You can find out more about our sessions and how to register on our events page.
Since the beginning of autumn this year, Co-Production Collective has been working with the Biomedical Research Centre at University College London Hospitals to bring together patients, members of the public, researcher, data scientists, governance specialists, doctors, and other staff members of the hospital. This is all for one particular purpose: to co-create a set of principles about using data in health research in a way that supports health and benefits the local community.
The vast quantity of data produced at University College London Hospital (UCLH) provides an incredible opportunity to find out more about different diseases and how to treat them. But the first step towards this is having honest and open discussions about how this is done in practice, including the concerns people may have, which is why the data principles are needed.
Rory has been part of both the Co-Production Collective team and the Patient and Public Involvement team of the Biomedical Research Centre at UCLH since 2020, but this is the first time these two roles come together in one project. It’s been great to see other teams embrace our core values at the online workshops we’re facilitating.
The topic of the workshops has been an entirely new territory for our team, challenging us to keep learning more about patient data with every workshop. How an NHS hospital links up and pools data is very complex to begin with - discussing this in a co-productive way may seem like an added hurdle at first. But in practice, it has been liberating to leave job titles at the door and focus on understanding each other, working towards reaching agreement in an environment where every attendee is free to ask or answer questions. We’re looking forward to continuing this work as November progresses.
Plenty!
Next week we’ll be meeting with our Allies Group to discuss how we start to co-create a new approach to making decisions within Co-Production Collective. We’ll share the notes and resources from the meeting here on the website as soon as we’re able. We’re also continuing to develop our payment policy, and put together a report about everything we’ve achieved – and where we could do better – over the last year, building on the slides we shared at Our Anniversary.
Elsewhere, our NHS England & NHS Improvement Hearing Checks project is continuing, as is our work with Camden Council and the Voices for Improvement project, hosted by National Voices. We’re delivering training for the Policy Impact Unit at UCL’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, as well as supporting colleagues at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a series of workshops. Towards the end of the month we’ll be delivering more sessions on a project run by the EPPI Centre, talking evaluation and co-production with the latest cohort of Darzi fellows at London South Bank University and catching up with partners from organisations including the Health Foundation and NIHR.
Whether you would like to find out more about co-production and our work, explore an idea or ask a question, we always love to hear from you! You can get in touch by emailing us at coproduction@ucl.ac.uk
Photo credit: Alisa Anton
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