Grant: Catalyst Grant: Patient-Oriented Research

Patient and Public collaboration in health research is strongly promoted across Canada. Although many researchers recognize the value of collaborating with patients and the public as partners in the research, tokenistic patient and public collaborations continues to be a major concern. Current understanding of patient collaboration in research does not address issues around trauma and safety. Thus, it is important to evaluate patient and public collaborations in health research by using a validated, evaluation tool, which incorporates the voices of diverse patient partners, decision-makers, and researchers. The main objective of our project is to strengthen and validate a newly developed evaluation tool that incorporates issues around trauma and safety, to assess the quality of patient and public collaboration in health research. We will strengthen our tool by identifying the missing components using the following methods: by conducting a review to identify key components and by conducting discussion groups and interviews in multiple provinces across Canada to get expert feedback on the tool. As a next step, using appropriate methods, we will check if the tool measures what it is supposed to measure and check if it is reliable. A large team of researchers, patient partners, and decision-makers will be involved in conducting this project. This evaluative tool will play an important role in strengthening meaningful patient and public collaborations in health research and thus strengthen the health of Canadians.