London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

​​Offered in a hybrid format, these seminars aim to encourage discussion and information-sharing on challenges and innovations in evidence syntheses methods and the study of evidence use. They take place every other month on a Wednesday between 12.30 and 13.45. They include 25-30 min presentations and plenty of time for discussion. 

​The need for Patient and public involvement (PPI) in systematic reviews is now well-established . However, whilst the diverse, iterative, flexible and non-standardised nature of PPI can be a strength, it can mean that reviewers often are unsure what to do, how to do it and what resources are available for them to do it right in their specific circumstances. These challenges are particularly acute since systematic reviewers are rarely trained in PPI, there are no reporting standards for their PPI work, and there has been little evaluation of PPI in the context of systematic reviews.  In this seminar, we will reflect on our experiences of conducting PPI in systematic reviews, and discuss some of the challenges and issues that we are currently grappling with when aiming to ensure that PPI is inclusive and beneficial to all. We invite the audience to discuss their experiences of PPI in reviews with us, and to consider priorities for development, such as reporting standards, training, and evaluation. 

Speakers

• Gillian Stokes is a multimethod public health researcher and systematic reviewer at the EPPI Centre, University College London, with previous professional experience within media and health .  She teaches modules on stakeholder involvement in research, inclusive research and various qualitative research methods. 

• Katy Sutcliffe is an Associate Professor at the EPPI Centre and Deputy Director of the London/York NIHR Policy Research Programme Review Facility.  She teaches a module on complex systematic reviews at University College London. 

• Professor Rebecca Rees (EPPI Centre), Dr Ginny Brunton (Ontario Tech University) and Dr Meena Khatwa (EPPI Centre) also contributed to the presentation. All have extensive experience in involving stakeholders in systematic reviews and conduct systematic reviews on a variety of public health and policy issues and have written texts that focus on both substantive findings from reviews and research methods and methodology development.