UL is to play a central role in the development of a national PPI Ignite Network (2021-2026) to support the development of public and patient involvement in health research in Ireland.
Led by NUI Galway, the Network is a collaboration between 7 HEIs and 10 national partners. Partnering locally with UL are Limerick City Community Development Project, Care Alliance Ireland, Health Research Charities Ireland, UL Health Sciences Academy, UL UNESCO Knowledge For Change and academic partners from universities in the US and UK.
UL will lead nationally on the development of academic training and education in PPI. In addition, the project will continue and expand the work of PPI Ignite@UL (2018-2020) in opening up spaces for sharing PPI expertise and knowledge, developing capacity in PPI, supporting research collaborations and developing policies and procedures to strengthen the culture for PPI in health research. Activities such as PPI training workshops, PPI Club, research prioritisations events and bursaries to support collaborations will all form part of the work of PPI Ignite Network@UL. The popular PPI Summer School will return on June 24th/25th for this year.
The initiative is funded by the HRB (€2.3m), the Irish Research Council (€1m) with co-funding from the seven HEI Lead Sites (€1.7m) leading to a total budget of €5 million over five years.
UL’s participation in the PPI Ignite Network is led from the PPI Research Unit in the School of Medicine and the UL team is as follows:
- Dr Jon Salsberg, Principal Investigator and Senior Lecturer in Primary Health Care Research (PPI)
- Úna McInerney, PPI Manager
- Professor Anne MacFarlane, Chair of Primary Healthcare Research
- Dr Imelda Doolan, Research Office
- Meghan Gilfoyle, PhD student, PPI Research Unit
The team can be contacted at email: ppi-ignite@ul.ie