Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Learning Health Systems (LHS) have been proposed as a way to improve the uptake of research evidence into care. A challenge within the context of the LHS is the different priorities among healthcare leaders, staff, patients, and communities more generally. Since 2010, there has been an increase in the involvement of patients, families and carers as well as the public more generally in setting priorities for research and care. Unfortunately, reviews show that while the inclusion of patients and families has improved in recent years, diversity and inclusion within priority setting exercises has not. This is a major problem given the differences in experiences of health care for underserved populations. To address the lack of diversity and inclusion within priority setting exercises, we will bring together researchers, members of communities that experience health inequities, and other groups to develop partnerships and a community to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in research priority setting exercises. To do this we propose a series of virtual World café meetings, an e-Delphi process, and a final half-day meeting to share experiences and identify gaps and areas of need that can be taken forward in future grant applications and research studies. The combination of synchronous and asynchronous methods was selected to allow for productive exploration of issues, but also to facilitate involvement from a range of interest holders representing different perspectives and who have varying availability due to commitments and working across jurisdictions and time-zones.