The Evolution of Stakeholder Engagement at CHILD-BRIGHT, Part 3: Scratching Beneath the Surface

As part of our efforts to meaningfully engage patient-partners and improve our engagement levels, CHILD-BRIGHT has used different standardized questionnaires and surveys to gather feedback from our members on engagement. We shared our preliminary findings from these surveys in Part 1 of our series on the Evolution of Stakeholder Engagement at CHILD-BRIGHT, while in Part 2, we assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our members’ engagement experiences.

We also conducted interviews with 25 of our Network members to dig deeper into the barriers and facilitators to engagement, as well as the impacts of patient-oriented research on patient-partners and researchers. The results of these interviews are now available in a new research brief, entitled Patient engagement in CHILD-BRIGHT’s patient-oriented research Network: Scratching beneath the surface. This is Part 3 our three-part series on patient engagement prepared by the CHILD-BRIGHT Network's Measuring Patient Engagement Working Group, a collaborative group of members from our Knowledge Translation and Citizen Engagement programs.

In this research brief, we share:

• The top facilitators of engagement with our research projects as well as with the wider Network that patient-partners and researchers reported to us

“When you take the time and effort to do that face to face, and everybody gets to know one another and knows what they’re there for, why they’re there and what they hope to get out of it, you do have that kind of respect and trust that then informs the rest of the engagement.”

— a CHILD-BRIGHT patient-partner on the importance of mutual respect and confidence

• The biggest barriers to engagement with our research projects and the wider Network that patient-partners and researchers reported to us

“You have to think about how and when to engage patient-partners to value their time. Sometimes research can be very slow and it’s a bit discouraging sometimes for patient- and family partners.”

— a CHILD-BRIGHT researcher on how maintaining engagement over time can be a challenge

• Our members’ thoughts about the impacts of a patient-oriented research approach

• Some of the ideas that patient-partners and researchers proposed to improve engagement at CHILD-BRIGHT

• Our Citizen Engagement Council and Knowledge Translation Committee’s recommendations for the next steps that should be prioritized by CHILD-BRIGHT to develop these solutions.

Thank you to all our Network members who took the time to share their experiences with us in the interview process!

Did you miss the first two parts of this series? Read Part 1 and Part 2 now.