Patient and Public Involvement

Patient and public involvement (PPI) is when members of the public are actively involved in academic research. In clinical, health and social care research, this includes: 

• Patients 

• Potential patients 

• Carers 

• People who use health and social care services 

• The “general public” 

PPI is different from public engagement. Public engagement is when information, results or knowledge from or about a research project is shared with the public. PPI is when patient and public members contribute to how the research is designed, conducted, interpreted, and communicated.  

Useful links 

Here are a few useful links to find out more about PPI more generally in the UK: 

NIHR: Be part of research 

HDR UK: Involving and engaging patients and the public 

I will work together with patients and members of the public to support the driver programme to produce research that matters.

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Programme Theme(s): PPI & Communications

Dr Tracy Jackson is Inflammation and Immunity’s Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) Lead, tasked with creating and implementing our PPI strategy. She is supported by our Research Administrator, Lily Quinlan.

Dedicated and highly experienced, Tracy’s comprehensive approach to PPI will help ensure that projects within our programme produce high-quality, impactful research that is relevant to the people it is meant to benefit.   

To do this, Tracy will identify and facilitate opportunities for the patient, public and community members to share their insights and be meaningfully involved across all areas of our programme. This includes collaborating with our two Lay Leads – Anna Grosse and Karen Mooney – in attending all steering group (senior management) meetings, ensuring that a culture of listening to, and acting upon, public voices begins from the top-down.  

Tracy will also coordinate with existing PPI groups and networks to run a range of activities that will shape our research, as well as engage with a wider audience to highlight the work being carried out. 

Read Tracy's professional profile 

“I see PPIE as the touchstone within health data research to ensure and secure the integrity of purpose, process and public engagement.” 

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Programme Theme(s): PPI & Communications 

Karen Mooney is a member of our Steering Group and one of our Lay Leads whose public voice will help shape our programme.  

Her experience with Crohn’s disease fuels her interest in chronic inflammatory conditions and their impact on overall health and well-being.  She wants to see how the programme can help improve patient care and outcomes. 

Passionate and inquisitive, Karen challenges our team to think about the broader implications of our research, how we talk about our findings and how we engage with patients and the public to develop a collaborative approach to future research.  

A qualified Human Resources professional, Karen retired from Local Government due to ill health. She has since delivered health awareness training in areas of deprivation and has served as a Lay Chair of the Patients Group of the RCGPNI. Previous Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) participation includes projects such as CO-CONNECT, GRAIMATTER & COALESCE, and co-chairing a workshop at the first Advance Pain Discovery Platform (APDP) conference.  

Aside from her interest in health, a growing involvement in the Arts led Karen to host community radio and television programmes and publish her poetry with The Hedgehog Poetry Press.

Relevant links

Find out more about APDP 

Find out more about COALESCE 

Find out more about CO-CONNECT 

Find out more about GRAIMATTER 

Visit The Hedgehog Poetry Press 

I hope that the Inflammation and Immunity Driver Programme can lay the foundation for an inclusive and combined approach towards future research between members of the public, patients, academics & researchers.

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Programme Theme(s): Patient & Public Involvement

Miss Anna Grosse is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s PPI Lay Leads. She works with Dr Tracy Jackson and Karen Mooney to ensure that patient and public voices are meaningfully integrated across our research portfolio and embedded within our research culture. 

As a person living with asthma, Anna provides our programme with invaluable insight based on her lived experience. Anna’s perspective on what it is like to manage and receive treatment for a chronic inflammation-mediated condition will help in shaping our research aims, methods, approaches to external engagement and dissemination. 

Curious by nature, Anna is eager to know more about research related to respiratory disorders. She is also very keen to explore and learn more about the emotional, physical, psychological and social aspects of living with a chronic condition. 

Prior to joining our programme, Anna was a Children and Young People (CYP) PPI member with the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research, an experience she found both interesting and enjoyable. She hopes that her experiences and knowledge gained from both her previous and ongoing PPI projects will allow her to assist with, and be of benefit to, future research. She is currently studying Psychology at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.