Original article: https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.70373
Introduction: The Consortium to Research Individual, Interpersonal and Social Influences in Pain (CRIISP) is a 4‐year UK
university collaboration investigating how thoughts and feelings, personal relationships and lifestyle can affect chronic pain.
Patient and public involvement in research recognises that researchers’ conceptions of health and illness can be enriched and
sense‐checked by those of people experiencing a health condition. Published literature reports a gap in meaningful patient and
public involvement in research into chronic pain, for example, during early study design. Input in this formative stage aimed to
ensure the research proposed had a patient‐centred focus which may benefit study implementation.
We describe how the authors sought to address this gap and established a diverse public involvement (PI) network to support
the CRIISP research.
Methods: Thirty‐six adult public contributors were appointed to work alongside the research teams. Lessons learned are
presented under the themes: optimising collaborative working, recruitment of public contributors, supporting public involvement
throughout CRIISP and the retention of public contributors. Throughout this paper, we refer to the term ‘public
involvement’ rather than ‘patient and public involvement’ in accordance with the NIHR definition which incorporates people
with a range of experiences.
Results: Working in partnership with our public contributors, we have embedded PI throughout a chronic pain research
programme using an innovative and collaborative process.
Conclusion: This model may inform others to maximise the potential of PI within their research.
Patient or Public Contribution: The paper reports the collaboration between public contributors with a lived experience of
chronic pain and the Consortium to Research Individual, Interpersonal and Social influences in Pain (CRIISP) researchers, by
means of a large public involvement network.
PPI Summaries
Summaries of Patient and Public Involvement work by CRIISP can be found here: https://criisp.uk/ppi-2/
Reflections of public involvement by Sharon Grieve: https://criisp.uk/2024/02/28/reflections-and-learning-on-recruiting-and-working-with-a-public-involvement-team/
Sharon Grieve and colleagues have written about this in: Establishing a Public Involvement Network for Chronic Pain Research in the United Kingdom: Lessons Learned, published in the journal Health Expectations
Successful public involvement Part 1: https://criisp.uk/2024/07/10/beyond-tokenistic-involvement-how-to-involve-public-contributors-in-research-part-1/
Successful public involvement Part 2: https://criisp.uk/2024/07/10/beyond-tokenistic-involvement-how-to-involve-public-contributors-in-research-part-2/
A glossary of pain research words to assist the understanding of studies. https://criisp.uk/glossary-for-public-contributors/