Overview
The NHS England funded Research Engagement Network is developing local partnerships between the Integrated Care system (ICS); NIHR Research infrastructure and Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) organisations to better support diverse communities to get involved in research.
The programme aims to increase the diversity of those who take part in research to be more representative of the local population; support engagement with communities who are typically underrepresented in research and support ICSs to develop and grow local Research Engagement Network activity.
The Greater Manchester REN programme is a partnership between The Greater Manchester NHS Integrated Care Partnership, working in collaboration with ourselves NIHR ARC-GM, Vocal; the Caribbean and African Health Network CIC ; the GM Voluntary, Charity and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Leadership Group and NIHR infrastructure in Greater Manchester.
The key aim of our collaborative work is to make research systems and processes more joined up, accessible and equitable through
- Co-develop a ‘Respectful Research Charter’ between VCFSE and research organisations to foster sustainable partnership working and build trust between communities and research teams
- Build an empowered community of research champions and shared learning/networking events to showcase successful collaboration models, providing support and developing mechanisms for feedback.
- Explore the value of VCFSE-led community research engagement hubs to coordinate the activity between research and VCFSE organisations with continued investment to ensure relationships can be sustained over time.
- Facilitating ways to exchange knowledge and skills between researchers and VCFSE organisations enabling mutually beneficial partnerships.
- Working collectively to develop an improved network-wide system for monitoring and evaluating diverse and inclusive involvement and participation in research.
The Five Respectful Research Charter Pillars
Read more about this work in the full report here.
