
On 15 October, a new paper entitled “Involving research participants in a pan-European research initiative: the EPAD participant panel experience” has been published in the journal Research Involvement and Engagement.
One of the founding goals of the EPAD programme was to involve participants as research partners. EPAD set up a series of ‘participant panels’ in England, France, Scotland, Spain and The Netherlands. These panels were formed from groups of participants in the study who met at least twice a year with researchers.
This paper reports on the set up, running and experiences of the EPAD participant panel and describes how participants were invited to join. Panels successfully contributed to study documents, study videos and presenting at national and international meetings.
We would like to thank the members of the participant panels who have dedicated their time and effort to attending meetings, providing opinions on experiences and proposed changes, and represented EPAD both locally and internationally. We would also like to thank staff members who have contributed to the set up and running of the participant panels within EPAD.
You can read the open-access article here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-020-00236-z