Public Involvement

The YH ARC Mental and Physical Multimorbidity Theme draws on a wide range of evidence to inform its research projects and plans. An essential part of this evidence is input directly from people with lived experience, family/informal carers, and health and social care professionals.

Shaping Priorities for Future Research

We wanted to give people living with both mental and physical health issues, their families, and the health and social care professionals who treat and support them, a voice in deciding the most important questions to be answered by future research. To do this, we have undertaken a research priority setting exercise.

Our aim was to identify unanswered questions about what would help people with mental health conditions look after their physical health, and what treatments and services, if examined by research could make a real difference to peoples’ lives. We worked with a Steering Group made up of people with lived experience, mental health practitioners and researchers from across Yorkshire and Humber, to prioritise those issues that are the most important for research to address and plan how we might respond to them.

See information on our research priority partnership and top ten research priorities identified (PDF , 1,452kb)

Our Lived Experience Advisory Panel

Our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) has been set up to provide independent advice to the ARC and, as appropriate, the wider Mental Health and Addictions Research Group, in three main areas:

Agreeing priorities for future research and funding applications
Co-designing research projects and methods
Helping to identify and recruit people with lived experience for project steering groups and other research study activities

Membership of the LEAP is open to people with experience of physical and mental health issues or experience of supporting a person with mental ill health. Panel members have an interest in research and how it can be used to improve the lives of people with mental ill-health, but they do not need to have any specialist knowledge or experience of academic research. Depending on their time and interests, members can get involved in a variety of face to face and online activities. These include meetings and workshops with the ARC team to discuss projects and research plans, commenting on proposals and project documents, providing advice and support to the ARC team about sharing research plans and findings with the wider community, (e.g. through Blogs, web pages, news items etc).

If you are interested in joining our Lived Experience Advisory Panel please contact Olivia Taylor on olivia.taylor@york.ac.uk

You can also look at the Terms of Reference (PDF , 66kb) for the ARC LEAP and the Role Description (PDF , 119kb) for panel members