January 29, 2024
Co-Production Collective is working with the EPPI Centre (Evidence for Policy & Practice Information Centre) at UCL (University College London) and UCL Health Economics Policy Lab. We will be working on a large programme funded by the National Institute of Health & Care Research (NIHR) to deliver high quality summaries of research to inform health and social care decision making across the UK.
These summaries of available research evidence are often called 'evidence syntheses’ (see definitions at bottom of this blog)* and come in many forms (e.g., systematic reviews or systematic maps of the evidence). We will co-produce these evidence syntheses with a range of people with different experience (e.g., people with lived/living experience, public health practitioners, medical professionals, researchers, etc.) to ensure that all relevant voices are heard and that we produce something useful.
This programme of research will run for five years and involves co-producing 3-5 evidence syntheses per year on a wide range of healthcare, public health, and social care topics. These topics will be requested directly by organisations and other parties involved, such as public health and social care providers, patient communities, and members of the public.
The group name for this programme is the London Alliance for the Co-production of Evidence Synthesis (or LACES). This is one of nine Evidence Synthesis Groups, which are funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and based in universities across the UK. For more information, visit our LACES project website and read more about the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Groups.
The projects will involve co-producing at many stages during the evidence synthesis review process (have a read of the opportunities listed below to find out more about the process and stages).
Our current opportunities are working on one of two different evidence synthesis projects examining specific research questions or becoming part of an overarching steering group for the programme.
Over the next five years, we will periodically announce further invitations for co-producers to get involved in a variety of projects. We will need to ensure that we have the right skills, knowledge and lived or living experience for this work to be meaningful and accountable to the public.
Please join us in working on this research project! Each of the invitations below provide more details about the projects, what is likely to be involved and how to apply.
Invitation to Project 1: Creating a systematic map of evidence about the implementation of screening and guidance for diabetic eye conditions
Invitation to Project 2: Exploring how we can capture and use a wider range of ways of measuring wellbeing related to overweight/obesity than clinical measures such as BMI when conducting evidence synthesis.
Invitation to LACES Advisory Group: Being part of a steering group overseeing the co-production process across all projects, all our evidence synthesis work over the 5-year duration of this research grant.
The deadline to submit your application for any of these opportunities is Wednesday 14 February 2024 at 12:00 noon.
All opportunities will be paid at our standard rate of £25 per hour plus expenses. Please see Our Payment Policy for further information. There may also be additional benefits and acknowledgements of being involved which will be outlined for each project. You will also receive training to support your involvement in these projects.
Co-Production Collective, at UCL (University College London) is a diverse and growing community of people from a variety of backgrounds who come together to learn, connect, and champion co-production for lasting change. We do this through providing consultancy, delivering training and presentations, and participating in the design and implementation of research projects, all with our community members involved. We work hard at practising what we preach and co-produce ourselves. This means our policies, practices, priorities and plans are shaped by our community for our own benefit but also as an example of co-production for others to learn from.
To us, co-production is an approach to working together in equal partnership and for equal benefit. You can find out more about our approach and what we do on our website.
At Co-Production Collective everything we do is guided by our core values. One of which is ‘inclusive‘. For us, this means proactively promoting inclusivity by being equitable in our approaches to all we do. Therefore, it’s really important for us to ensure we are actively engaging with and involving people from all communities in all we do. We go out of our way to make opportunities for people to get involved in what we do as equitable and accessible as possible.
We are particularly keen to recruit from groups that are typically under-represented in health research and decision-making. If there is anything we can do to make it easier for you to apply, please get in touch with Vanessa via email at v.bennett@ucl.ac.uk.
About evidence synthesis (a way of combining and making sense of evidence): Local, national, and international decision-makers often use research evidence to inform decisions about how best to use resources to deliver health and social care. Millions of pieces of research are published every year. It is a big task for policymakers and practitioners to look at the research when they make decisions. Evidence synthesis involves bringing research studies on a specific topic together, assessing whether they are trustworthy, and summarising the findings. When done well, it can ensure a complete, fair and reliable picture of the available, relevant evidence.
The evidence synthesis approaches we use mean that decisions can be informed by more research, without having to read it all. Some methods are called “systematic” as they are done in a careful, organized, and step-wise manner. These are some of the approaches we use:
Systematic reviews gather together the existing research on a particular question. It uses a process to collect any relevant information from the research, and then organises this information to help answer the question.
A systematic map gathers together existing research on a particular question from many different sources. Researchers then organise or “map” this evidence in a way that allows decision-makers to easily see the key features of the available research.
Cover photo credit: Dan Dimmock from Unsplash
Interested in finding out more or exploring how we could work together?
Co-Produce with us