Patient And Public Involvement at the Southampton Clinical Trials Unit

Read the full strategy: Southampton Clinical Trials Unit Patient and Public Involvement Strategy – 2022-2025

Are you interested in improving the early diagnosis of cancer?

We’re looking for a public contributor to join us as a co-applicant on the funding application for the miONCO-Dx trial, playing an important role in development and oversight of the trial and who will sit on our Trial Management Group should our funding application be successful.

Training and support will be provided and you will be reimbursed for your time in line with NIHR guidelines and the SCTU PPI Payment Policy.

For more information, see the miONCO-Dx PPI advert and contact Victoria Goss, Programme Manager – v.m.goss@soton.ac.uk

Public contributor needed for a bowel cancer treatment vaccine trial

We’re looking for a public contributor with lived experience of colorectal/bowel cancer, or a family member or carer of someone with the disease, to sit on the Trial Management Group (TMG) for a new clinical trial which will test a vaccine that can stimulate the immune system to attack a subtype of colon cancer.

Training and support will be provided and you will be reimbursed for your time in line with NIHR guidelines and the SCTU PPI Payment Policy.

For more information, see the full Neo-POLEM PPI advert and contact Kelly Cozens, Senior Trial Manager – k.cozens@southampton.ac.uk

Could you help shape research into treatments for urinary tract and bladder cancer?

We're looking for a public contributor with personal experience of UTSCC or bladder cancer, or a family member of someone with the disease, to join our research team for the AURORA trial as part of the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) to help monitor patient safety and quality of life implications of the trial.

Training and support will be provided and you will be reimbursed for your time in line with NIHR guidelines and the SCTU PPI Payment Policy.

For more information, see the AURORA PPI advert and contact our PPI Coordinator, Liz Allaway - L.Allaway@soton.ac.uk.

Study background

Clinical trials of new medicines or health technologies rely on patients, carers or even healthy volunteers agreeing to take part in research and it is therefore vital that patients have a say in how this research is done. For this reason, patient and public involvement (PPI) is heavily embedded into research conducted at the Southampton Clinical Trials Unit. 

But we know that certain groups and communities are under-served by clinical research. We therefore need to ensure that PPI in the design and conduct of our trials is reflective of the whole population, to encourage more people from diverse backgrounds to take part in research.

The Southampton Clinical Trials Unit is conducting a study to better understand the barriers that prevent or dissuade people from under-served groups from taking part in Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) for clinical trials and learn how we can overcome these.

Our aim is to try and improve the diversity and inclusion of patient and public involvement in clinical trials research and make healthcare research better for everyone.

What are we doing?

We would like to speak to people who identify as being from under-served communities to explore what barriers may be preventing or dissuading people from getting involved.

We will do this through discussion groups/interviews and an online survey.

Using information and comments from the discussion groups and the survey, we then aim to co-produce resources that can be used by researchers to reduce these barriers when conducting PPI as part of their future research projects.

Would you like to be involved?

If you are interested in taking part in our study, please read the Participant Information Sheet for more details about what taking part involves.

If you would like to get involved in a discussion group or one-to-one interview, please fill in this form to register your interest and one of our team will get back to you. Participants will be offered a £25 shopping voucher as a thank you for their time.

If you are part of a community organisation or local group and would be able to host a discussion group where the study team can speak to people within your community, please contact project lead Liz Allaway, L.Allaway@soton.ac.uk.

We also have a digital survey where you can get involved online. Take the survey here. The survey will be open to responses until 31st May 2023 and respondants will have the option to be entered into a prize draw to win one of two £25 shopping vouchers.

If you would like to find out more about our clinical trials and PPI before taking part, there is lots more information on the About Us, News, and Patient and Public Involvement pages of this website.