Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grants - Institute/Initiative Community Support

Meaningful patient engagement in research empowers patient partners to participate in high-level priority setting, co-designing the translational potential of research questions, and research outputs are communicated to patients and communities in ways that resonate with their values and priorities. While patient engagement is increasingly embedded within health research, there remains a significant gap in how patient partners can meaningfully contribute to basic science and laboratory-based donation and transplantation research. This project aims to improve how patient partners and persons with lived experience are involved in basic and laboratory-based donation and transplantation research. While patient engagement is now common in clinical and applied research, guidance is missing on how people with lived experience can contribute to early-stage bench science conducted in laboratory settings in donation and transplant. This project aims to undertake the planning stages required to identify barriers, facilitators, and existing approaches to patient engagement in basic and pre-clinical organ donation and transplantation research. Through an environmental scan, interviews, and a national survey, we will identify barrier and opportunities for collaboration between lab-based researchers and patient partners. Ultimately, this work aims to strengthen patient-oriented research, improve the relevance and impact of transplantation science, and create a model that can be adapted across broader areas of biomedical research.