Career and experience
My career started as a part-time Operations and Communications Officer for Healthwatch Sheffield, an independent organisation who collect feedback from the public on local health and care services, to share with them and make improvements. They are based in the building which houses Voluntary Action Sheffield and as a result I made many voluntary and community contacts whilst working there and became passionate about ensuring equitable access to health and care services.

I went on to work for the NHS in 2019 in various roles, building up from Administrator, to Programme Support Officer and now Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Officer. I progressed through secondments in different areas, learning more about the health sector and upskilling. Whilst on secondment at the Integrated Care Board, I supported social prescribing projects in the voluntary sector, to address social isolation in the community during the pandemic and awarded funding to continue their work across South Yorkshire. Alongside this, the role enabled me to support the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Alliance across South Yorkshire, collaborating to develop the Memorandum of Understanding. This Alliance has since held workshops for their Working Together in Research Project, to develop Guiding Principles and a Maturity Matrix for researchers on how to work with local communities and address the barriers to accessing research. I attended the workshops in my current research role and was able to contribute to the development and disseminate the learnings to my current teams.

My current role as a PPIE Officer is shared between the BRC and CRF in Sheffield. Working across both teams gives me unique insights into different colleagues’ work, from study set up, through to delivery. My role involves community outreach across Sheffield to raise awareness in communities of research and to listen to community priorities and feed them back to the researchers, bridging the gap between healthcare and communities. I also provide PPIE and inclusive research training to the early career researchers undergoing their PhDs and nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (NMAHPs), incorporating public contributors and Community Research Link Workers into our workshops to hear directly from communities what the barriers to accessing research are, to address them.

Why research matters
Across health research there is evidence that the people most in need of support and healthcare, are the least likely to be involved and represented in the research cycle. Raising awareness of research and including more underserved populations will ensure the future of research and that the resulting treatments are applicable to everyone. We continue to learn from the lived experiences of local people and use their input to shape our approach and delivery, to ensure equitable care.