Our 8th biennial INVOLVE conference was held at the East Midlands Conference Centre,
Nottingham on 13 and 14 November 2012. This was our largest conference yet with:

• 490 delegates over 2 days
• 85 papers, workshops and other sessions
• 79 posters
• 6 parallel sessions.

Thank you to all of the presenters, poster exhibitors, delegates and conference organisers
for making INVOLVE 2012 such a success.

Conference web pages
Resources from the Conference, including photographs, PowerPoint presentations, and
abstracts of presentations are now available in the conference area of our website: www.invo.org.uk/resource-centre/conference/

Keynote speech
Sir Iain Chalmers from the James Lind Initiative gave an inspiring and thought-provoking keynote speech on the role of public involvement in avoiding waste in research. Sir Iain focused on two main sources of waste:

• researchers addressing questions which are of low priority to clinicians and patients, not looking at outcomes that patients and carers consider important, and not involving clinicians and patients in setting research agendas
• the large number of studies that are never published in full and the under-reporting of studies with disappointing results.

Throughout his presentation, Sir Iain reflected on the work of the James Lind Initiative in helping to address these issues over the past decade by:

• identifying and publishing uncertainties about the effects of treatments
• taking these uncertainties and working out with clinicians, patients and carers what the priority uncertainties were and the ones that most needed further research
• producing resources to help equip members of the public with the wherewithal to be confidently critical of scientific medical research misconduct.

You’ll find Sir Iain’s PowerPoint presentation together with an audio recording of the speech and accompanying transcription at: www.invo. org.uk/resource centre/conference/involve2012/

Reflections on INVOLVE 2012
Members of the Peninsula Cerebra Research Unit for Childhood Disability Research (PenCRU) reflect on their experiences of participating in the Conference: 

Camilla McHugh, Family Involvement Coordinator writes: In the true spirit of INVOLVE, PenCRU invited four members of the Family Faculty to the event, giving them an opportunity to meet peers, engage in workshops, and share their experiences of contributing to research. Julia enjoyed the busy schedule: “This event had a huge variety of workshops that were relevant and interesting to me. I knew how important patient and public involvement (PPI) was, but this conference gave me the opportunity to affirm this belief by meeting other people like me.”

Jonathan, a relatively new member, agreed: “We didn’t all attend the same workshops so
we shared learning during the breaks. It seemed pretty obvious that PPI is slowly becoming a gold standard in modern research.”

Antonia, who co-presented with the team, said: “Going to the Conference really brought home to me the practicalities of how the public and patients are being encouraged to get involved in NHS, public health and social care research. The conference provided me with a good introduction to the range of involvement opportunities for the public. My main interest is in how to involve people with learning difficulties and limited communication abilities so I made a particular point of going to Anita Franklin’s presentation on Successes and challenges in undertaking participatory research with disabled young people and Elizabeth Jones’ presentation, Our journey together: Working with people with learning
disabilities in health service research.”

Bel reflected: “I really appreciated the opportunity to attend the conference. There were so many workshops it was difficult to choose which ones to attend. I particularly enjoyed the workshops that were co-presented with people who were involved in the projects as well as the researchers. I learnt a lot during the two days.”

www.pencru.org
Email: pencru@pcmd.ac.uk
Tel: 0139 272 2968