The British Society for Immunology recognises that patient and public involvement (PPI) is vital to enable immunology to thrive and deliver positive outcomes for health. Involving the public, patients, carers and people with lived experience within the BSI goes beyond just their passive participation as recipients of our information or activities but is rather a mutually beneficial, active and evolving partnership. This brings significant value and increases the impact of our work. Additionally, we’re advocates for PPI in immunology research, which actively involves people with lived experience and seeks ideas, views and perspectives on a variety of elements of a project to impact how the research is conducted.
Through involving the public and patients, the BSI aims to:
- Support BSI members and the wider immunology community in enhancing the relevance, effectiveness and standard of their research
- Improve the quality, reach and impact of our activities that are important to immunology, including, but not limited, to public health, community engagement, policy, partnership and research support
- Inspire our wider community through including more diverse voices in our projects and providing opportunities to engage with different audiences
PPI successes and impact
We strive to celebrate successes and showcase the impact and beneficial influence that involving people with lived experience can bring to science and champion the importance of PPI in research. We openly share our lessons learnt with the wider community to encourage best practice and continuously improve our own ways of working. Follow the links below to discover our achievements of leading PPI within different projects, which we hope will inspire and encourage more PPI to be embedded in immunology research.
The British Society for Immunology is a proud partner for PPI within immunology research, expertly establishing and guiding PPI within various projects. Learn about the studies we’ve supported and continue to work with, including the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium, National Core Studies Immunity and the STRAVINKSY study.
We understand how important it is to equip researchers with the tools for PPI and have jointly created specialist training with public contributors that enables effective outcomes when involving patients and the public in research.
Embedding PPI within BSI activities
We want to meaningfully involve people with lived experience of conditions that affect the immune system in the work the BSI carries out that leads towards our vision of better health for all through immunology.
We will be working with patient and public contributors and our members as well as consulting external organisations to establish a new way of working at the BSI. We will be co-developing these plans to ensure involvement is embedded within our work, including projects around our public health, engagement, policy, partnership and research support activities. Further details will be shared here in due course.
As a first step towards that commitment, we are active members of the Shared Learning Group on Involvement which aims to encourage sharing best practice and lessons learnt about the involvement of people with lived experience between charities working in the UK.
For further information or any questions about our patient and public involvement work, please contact Jennie Evans, BSI Director of External Affairs at j.evans@immunology.org