Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Patient engagement in research promotes collaboration between researchers and individuals with firsthand experience of a health condition or their informal caregivers. This inclusive approach has been widely recognized in clinical research for increasing understanding of patient priorities and aligning research with patient perspectives. However, our previous work has revealed a gap in engaging patients in preclinical research, which involves laboratory investigations with cells and animals (Fox et al., eBiomedicine 2021). To address this critical gap, we propose a novel approach where patient partners and researchers are brought together to identify research questions suitable for preclinical research on sepsis (i.e., life-threatening infections that require intensive care). Our approach involves a daylong meeting, along with pre- and post-meeting activities, during which research priorities will be identified for investigation in preclinical sepsis research. During the meeting, patient partners, researchers, trainees, and knowledge users will participate in facilitated discussions on sepsis and preclinical models. These discussions will lead to a priority-setting exercise that identifies a preclinical sepsis research question of interest to be studied in a future preclinical systematic review, and then in a lab model of sepsis. This meeting will be the first step toward patient engagement in preclinical sepsis research. By actively involving patient partners as co-investigators, our initiative will pave the way for advancements in patient engagement across preclinical research. This includes integrating patient perspectives in priority setting and exploring avenues for patient involvement at the earliest stages of research. Our meeting and approach will serve as a model for other preclinical researchers to follow.