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Designing Meaningful Engagement: Choosing participatory methods across the research lifecycle

Date(s)
Sept. 29, 2026 (noon – 1 p.m.)
Location
Online/Virtual

Event Description

This webinar will introduce a new practical guide to designing meaningful patient and public engagement across the research lifecycle, exploring how different research decisions call for different levels and methods of engagement and how to select participatory approaches that fit the purpose, people and context.

Event Host(s)

  • CHI's Public & Patient Engagement Team

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Overview

Patient and public engagement can strengthen health research at every stage—from identifying priorities and designing studies to interpreting findings, mobilizing knowledge and implementing change.

But meaningful engagement requires more than inviting people to the table or selecting an engagement activity. It begins by understanding what decision needs to be made, whose knowledge is needed to inform it, and how people with lived and living experience can meaningfully influence that decision.

This webinar will introduce a new practical guide to designing meaningful patient and public engagement across the research lifecycle, exploring how different research decisions call for different levels and methods of engagement and how to select participatory approaches that fit the purpose, people and context. Grounded in trauma-informed and intersectional approaches, the session will also consider the conditions that enable meaningful participation—including attention to power, equity, accessibility, cultural safety, relationships, compensation and recognition—and introduce practical tools for moving from “we need to engage patients” toward intentionally designing engagement that values experiential knowledge and supports shared decision-making.

Learning Objectives

  • • Identify opportunities for meaningful patient and public engagement across the research lifecycle by recognizing the decisions that can be informed by experiential knowledge.
  • • Differentiate between levels of engagement and select participatory methods that align with the purpose, decision, people and context of engagement.
  • • Apply trauma-informed and intersectional principles when planning engagement, including consideration of power, safety, accessibility, equity and barriers to participation.
  • • Use practical tools and reflexive questions to design engagement that enables diverse forms of knowledge to meaningfully influence research decision-making.
  • • Recognize engagement as an ongoing relational practice that requires transparency, accountability, reciprocity and opportunities for reflection, learning and repair.